


Home Free (a Sentinilized version of The Rock)

by Stormheller



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:33:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 67,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormheller/pseuds/Stormheller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally written in 2003 and published as a zine. First time on the net!</p><p>When an insane army general threatens Cascade with biological terrorism, FBI bio-chem expert Dr. Blair Sandburg is recruited to help stop him. To infiltrate the renegade's command centre on Storm Island, a cross-functional incursion team is formed, among them a menacing and mysterious convict, Jim Ellison. When the terrorists capture most of the team Blair must turn to Ellison to complete the mission. Will Sandburg and Ellison be able to stop the madman and save Cascade? </p><p>Inspired by the hit movie "The Rock", 70,000 words.</p><p>IF YOU LIKED THIS STORY... please check out my pro writing. <br/>My gay stories here: http://www.stormgrant.com/<br/>My urban fantasy here: http://ginaxgrant.wordpress.com/the-relucant-reaper-series/<br/>Thank you,<br/>~ Gina / Stormy / Stormheller</p>
    </blockquote>





	Home Free (a Sentinilized version of The Rock)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2003 and published as a zine. First time on the net!
> 
> When an insane army general threatens Cascade with biological terrorism, FBI bio-chem expert Dr. Blair Sandburg is recruited to help stop him. To infiltrate the renegade's command centre on Storm Island, a cross-functional incursion team is formed, among them a menacing and mysterious convict, Jim Ellison. When the terrorists capture most of the team Blair must turn to Ellison to complete the mission. Will Sandburg and Ellison be able to stop the madman and save Cascade? 
> 
> Inspired by the hit movie "The Rock", 70,000 words.
> 
> IF YOU LIKED THIS STORY... please check out my pro writing.   
> My gay stories here: http://www.stormgrant.com/  
> My urban fantasy here: http://ginaxgrant.wordpress.com/the-relucant-reaper-series/  
> Thank you,  
> ~ Gina / Stormy / Stormheller

** Chapter 1. Light My Fire  
**

**Location: Cascade, Washington**

**West Coast Time: Thursday, 2:30 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Thursday, 5:30 pm**

 

Rain sheeted the ageing office windows, tracing eerie patterns across the interior of the remote cinderblock building. The oily shadows lent a sickly pallor to the bleak interior; furniture and equipment appeared to be melting, the people dying of a grey, watery plague.

Relegated to a lonely corner of the compound, the isolated building was constructed of layer upon layer of unyielding concrete. Modular workstations and modern office trappings did little to hide structural origins that pre-dated World War II.

Vast asphalt distances separated it from its nearest neighbor. Who wanted to be anywhere near the Chemical and Biological Weapons Division of the FBI’s Cascade field office?

Its lobby, relentlessly high-tech, featured every form of modern security. Visitors were required to endure the usual precautions involving buttons and buzzers, bulletproof plexiglas, cameras and ID. Plus a thorough scan with a metal detector, post-9/11.

There were very few visitors, though, and employees let themselves in with a mag-stripe card and ever-changing key code. The young agents assigned to security on the Bio-Chem building never stayed long. “Boring butdangerous” was a job description neither coveted nor embraced by the ambitious.

Past security, the lobby expanded into a long, uninviting hallway with closed doors every few yards. Those brave— or stupid— enough to work there dubbed it _“_ The Submarine _”,_ an appellation that grew from the singular lack of design detail, battleship-grey paint on every wall, and the inescapable miasma of recirculated air. State of the art deodorizers and air filters were all eventually defeated by years of chemicals, gases and greases that lent a funky, oddly borscht-like odour to the labs and hallways.

Stencilled across the frosted glass of the third door down were the words “Bio-Chem Lab No. 3”. It was differentiated from the doors of labs two and four only when a rubber-tipped dart bounced off the shatter-resistant glass and dropped into a strategically placed trashcan.

“Son of a bitch!” a pretty, dark-haired woman in a white lab coat grumbled, slapping her palm against her workstation. “I can’t believe you made that shot.”

The lab’s other inhabitant replied, laughing, “You owe me five bucks, Sam.” At one time, Blair Sandburg might have added “or a blowjob”, but their relationship had gone up in flames, quite literally, some time ago. Now he lived in a conflicted state of friendly partnership and fear of capricious reprisal. Today, however, appeared to be a good day. “Double or nothing?” He handed her the toy gun.

Blair watched as she let gravity drag her stockinged feet from the desktop to the floor, using the momentum to spin the ergonomically correct chair toward him. She seized the proffered weapon from his outstretched hands. The Ninja cries were apparently just for effect.

“You’d think we were 13 instead of 30.” She sighed, yawning, scratching her attractive neck with the plastic gun barrel.

“Actually, I’m thirt—” Blair was about to remind her he was 34, not 30, but cut himself off, thinking it ill-advised to make even the vaguest reference to birthdays. “I’m thirsty,” he said instead.

It had been a forgotten birthday that had been their downfall as a couple, and she tended to be exceedingly touchy about it. Touchy, long of memory and vengeful. Just what a guy wanted in a lab partner. Although how idiotic had it been for them to become involved in the first place? But boredom will do that. Great minds recruited and then left on hold… just in case of a deadly crisis involving bombs, poisons or other creative use of chemicals. Still, good bucks for easy work. At least he wasn’t the kind of person who constantly sought out new challenges. He’d had enough of challenges and hard work earning degree after degree at university. First anthropology, then psychology, then starting again with biochemistry. Not to mention that brief foray into interior design.

He grinned triumphantly as her shot bounced off the turning blades of the ceiling fan circling lazily above.

His confidence in an easy win faltered when the ricocheting dart hit a cardboard target across the room. The target toppled backward, knocking over a beaker full of green liquid that immediately began to sizzle as it hit a pan filled with yellow powder. The green and yellow compound produced an evil-smelling smoke, which triggered an industrial outtake vent. The string wrapped around one of its blades pulled taut as it turned, yanking a tiny likeness of Blair from a hidden recess behind a file cabinet to dangle symbolically from a tiny noose around its neck.

“I… hey… um.”

“Thank you. Thank you. That’s high praise, indeed.” It was just like Sam to bow rather than curtsey. “Four degrees, two diplomas and a handful of certificates and that’s the best you can manage?”

Without bothering to get up, Blair casually sprayed the pan of smoking chemicals with flame-retardant foam.

“When I transferred to Bio-Chem six months ago…” Sam yawned. “…I was under the impression that this would be exciting work. Or useful work. Or at least… work.”

“Patience, Sam. It has its moments.”

“I don’t know how you’ve lasted four years here, Blair.” She stood up and stretched in an interesting way.

“What can I say? I was recruited right out of Rainier and I had a helluva lot of student loans to pay off.” Blair was more than a little tired of this conversation. “Still,” he repeated. “It has its moments.”

He gazed at her, wondering whether to start a new game since he’d been so completely blitzed at this one, or give up hope that the rain would lighten and just leave for the day. Right on cue, an alarm sounded. “Like this one!” he shouted over the cacophony.

Sam smiled excitedly.

Gosh darn, Blair thought dryly. This could be her very first life-threatening crisis. She’d been so disappointed when all the other times had been false alarms.

~~~

Sam followed Blair along The Submarine, then down a grimy corridor illuminated by antiseptic light from bare fluorescent bulbs. This part of the building had never been refurbished. Blair assumed the administrators figured, why bother? It was rarely used, and then only by internal staff that it didn’t have to look good for. And besides, eventually one of the lab staff would fumble in disarming some threat and the drab hallway would blow up. Or possibly implode, depending on the nature of the final combustion. Any way their local world ended— whimper, bang or sneeze— serviceable was good enough for this passageway.

The interior decorator in Blair shuddered. The dingy grey-green walls smelled of things left too long in dampness. It reminded him of the tour he’d once taken of the old abandoned prison out on Storm Island. He shuddered at the thought of men being housed there as recently as five years ago. He was glad it was now a tourist attraction, and not a very popular one at that. He yanked his thoughts back to the present. There was a real problem here to be dealt with.

Sam and Blair entered a medium-sized laboratory where two FBI technicians were bent over complicated workstations. The rest of the room and paraphernalia were old and used. It could easily have been twenty years ago. For an irreverent moment, Blair fantasized that the long, dingy corridor was actually a passage in time.

“Hey, Blair. Samantha.”

Serena Chang always sounded calm no matter the circumstances. Blair tended to feel a little dingy around the attractive scientist. Sam had revealed to him that Serena had her lab coats carefully tailored to make the best of her figure. Where Blair’s regulation lab coat was spotted with faded chemical stains of spills gone by, Serena’s was gleaming white, looking all the whiter against her mocha skin tones.

The lab’s other inhabitant was Greg Sanders, young smart-ass of Nordic descent, so fresh out of school he was still rebelling against something or other. A bit of a know-it-all, he often acted as if he’d somehow earned his youth while they’d squandered theirs. If Blair thought spending eight hours a day in a lab with Sam was tough slogging, he could only imagine what Greg and Serena found to do with their time. Perhaps they too had tried the forbidden fruit thing. The image was kind of… interesting.

With great mental effort, Blair refocused on the task at hand, pushing aside distracting thoughts, shaking himself back to the present. His mind had the strangest tendency to wander when faced with serious situations. To the outside world, it made him look calm, tough, brave in the face of danger. Inside, Blair worried that he might be unfocussed and dangerously diverted. He thought about things like that. At all the wrong times.

Taking a deep centering breath to help refocus, Blair walked along the side of the lab that was almost completely glassed in. It reminded him of an ice-hockey rink where great sheets of plexi kept flying pucks out of the teeth of fans. Mostly. Inside the lab’s plexiglas was an air-locked gas chamber. (Couldn’t they have found something else to call it? Blair thought parenthetically.) Again, he was reminded of his visit to the Cascade Correctional Center.

High up on the glass, someone had pasted a day-glo sticker praising the Beastie Boys’ first album. _Licensed to Ill,_ indeed.

“Hey, Dr. Sandburg!”

Greg tended to call coworkers by their full titles. A reminder, perhaps, that he was the youngest doctorate ever to be employed in the Bio-Chem Division. At times, Greg could be transparently manipulative, a strange mix of arrogance and ass-kissing. Still, he had a good heart and Blair liked him. In the candour of his own head, Blair saw a bit of his younger self in Greg.

Greg pointed toward the gas chamber. “A scent dog at Cascade International Airport got a whiff of something addressed to a Bosnian refugee camp. Could be detergent, could be aflotoxin, Saran gas, anthrax, or other poisons like they find in the dirty bombs in Iraq.” He didn’t, however, look as if he believed it would be more than Arrowroot cookies and baby formula, just like the last three times. Perhaps Saran gas smelled a lot like Arrowroots to a beagle.

Blair turned to look where Greg indicated. Inside the chamber stood a wooden packing crate about the size and shape of the old console television his grandparents still had in their basement rec room. Maybe a little taller. Next to the crate was a table housing a number of standard-issue poison detection instruments. Unlike the rest of the room, these were definitely state of the art.

“A Bosnian refugee camp? I don’t get it.” Sam was reviewing the paperwork even as she declared her lack of understanding. She flipped triplicate forms over the great metal jaw clamping them to the chipped brown board.

“Half a million Serbians reside in the U.S., Sam. Serbians don’t like Bosnians. Read a newspaper. It’s good for you. Hold out your hand, palm down,” Blair ordered, gently.

She extended her hand parallel to the floor, all eyes on it. It was shaky, but not, Blair judged, enough to impair her ability to disarm a bomb, if need be. “I’m okay, guys. Really. Let’s do it.”

Despite some misgivings, Blair nodded. Everybody’s a beginner once. He certainly hoped for beginner’s luck.

Sam and Blair retreated to a nearby alcove and dressed themselves and each other in suits made of vulcanized rubber, Teflon and Kevlar. Each suit was clearly labelled for its wearer, having been custom-fitted at the time of hire. Each new bio-chem employee received business cards, a benefit plan, a gun, and a customized anti-poison suit. “Welcome to the FBI,” Blair had thought at the time. Not quite the brass ring he’d fantasized about when he was working on his dissertation.

Carefully sealing the Velcro plackets over the seams of Sam’s suit, Blair joked about how much more fun it used to be to _undress_ each other. It was a small attempt at easing the tension, and Sam gifted him with a grateful smile before pulling her helmet’s plexi visor over her tense face. The curve of the clear plastic stretched her mouth wide, lending an unearthly effect. She looked like an alien chaser’s wet dream or a plastic surgeon’s nightmare.

The gas chamber door hissed open, like a giant snake sounding a sibilant warning. They were locked in for the duration, not coming out again until it was over. One way or the other.

Blair headed for the instrument table next to the crate. Outside, Serena pushed buttons. Greg spun knobs. The technicians’ heads bobbed from banks of computer monitors to their colleagues in the clear plastic cage. It must have been like watching the tennis match from hell. Blair gestured thumbs up. Serena returned his signal, and used the same thumb to stab and hold a big red button.

A glass vessel descended from the ceiling. It looked like an empty mayonnaise jar with air holes punched in its metal screwtop. It was not unlike the high-tech version of a kid’s bug collection jar. And, indeed, that’s exactly what it was, as inside the apparatus was a chaos of scrabbling cockroaches.

As Sam and Greg were still officially considered trainees, and Blair was unsure how much they knew or would be able to recall under pressure, he chose to explain. Lecturing had always calmed him. It reassured him of his own knowledge and preparedness for the situation at hand. “Coal miners…” He coughed once, and began again. “Coal miners use canaries. Bio-techs use roaches. More cost-effective.” He looked at his partner and grinned. The distortion of the faceplate rendered her returning smile hideous.

She giggled nervously.

Serena leaned forward and spoke into her mike, her clear contralto rendered harsh by the mechanics of the thing. “We have airlock, Blair. Proceed.” On Sundays, she sang in a touring gospel choir, Blair recalled.

Blair tried to meet her eyes for reassurance, both his and hers. They’d known each other longest, but the helmet prevented eye contact across the room. He felt alone amongst his teammates. Alone.

Blair’s helmet mike lent a tinny Mickey Mouse quality to his own voice as he dictated his moves for the official record, hoping these prosaic words weren’t to be his last.

“July 1, fourteen hundred hours, Agent Dr. Blair Sandburg and Agent / trainee Dr. Samantha Skinner initiated examination of a wooden crate. Suspicion of Saran gas device inside.” Saran or whatever… just suspicion was enough.

Blair grabbed a crowbar from the instrument table and gently pried open the crate’s wooden lid. “Force with finesse,” he instructed Sam. “Like shifting a pinball machine just enough to affect the trajectory of the ball without actually tilting the mechanics of the game.” Her father was an aficionado of the old mechanical games so she grasped the reference and nodded her understanding, her whitish helmet rocking like a demented volleyball. At his direction, she moved to the other side of the crate and together they gingerly hoisted the lid.

The crate was filled with UNICEF-type items. Blair lifted out a hot plate. Sam retrieved an eggbeater. Blair ran a hand-held poison sensor past each item. It never failed to amaze him how far computerized miniaturization had come just in his lifetime. He remembered when the simplest of calculators had been as big as this poison scanner.

Forcing his attention back to the scene, Blair continued his dictation. “Appears to be kitchen items, cleaning agents, and…” He pulled out a threadbare sweatshirt. “Old clothes.”

“Well, this is thrilling! I can’t wait to go back to our extreme dart game.” Sam, apparently, was disappointed that it wasn’t a real incident. Still, she was taking it all very seriously and running through her paces like a pro.

Blair, on the other hand, was more than relieved that it wasn’t shaping up to be a real crisis. He was always delighted when something failed blow up in his face or pose a serious threat to life and limb. But it wasn’t over yet, and even if it turned out to be a big old non-event, it was still a good training exercise for the newbies.

He and Sam were down to the final layer of crap in the bottom of the crate, its wooden edge digging into Sam’s belly as she leaned in and grasped a child’s dolly swaddled in bright orange nylon. She cradled it for a bizarre maternal moment as Blair ran the poison sensor along its wee body, feeling very much like Bones McCoy with his trusty tricorder.

“Oh, shit!” Sam cried out. “The needle’s going crazy! Totally off the charts.”

Serena and Greg slammed switches, hit keys, yanked levers.

“Careful. Goddamn it, Sam! Do. Not. Drop. It.”

That would be bad. Very bad. Not that the current situation wasn’t bad to the extreme.

The doll’s eyes opened and chintzy carnival music began to emanate from it along with a blast of pinkish spray. The viscous liquid hit Blair’s forearm and Sam’s palm.

Glancing outside the gas chamber, Blair saw Serena stab two buttons. From his training, Blair knew one to be marked “exhaust” and the other “emergency”.

Another alarm sounded, a ferocious klaxon announcing their situation to the entire building. “ _Get out! Get out!”_ it seemed to be screaming. FBI personnel all over the facility raced for their closest exits. The formerly bored security guard hit the button that opened all the doors simultaneously, just before grabbing his jacket and fleeing across the parking lot toward hoped-for safety.

Inside the gas chamber, the pinkish cloud hovered. Ceiling exhaust fans drew it upward.

In the suspended glass container, the cockroaches convulsed, flipped in the air and exploded, roach guts splattering the vessel walls. As if a jar full of skittering cockroaches hadn’t been revolting enough, the new mess virtually defined vile.

“What’s hap…? What’s happening…?” Sam asked in a lost and scared little-girl voice, although she knew all too well.

Eyes on the digital clock of the control panel, Serena, senior agent on the scene, ordered them reassuringly, “Don’t panic, Blair. Sam. Fifty seconds and the gas will clear. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

A small part of Blair’s mind wondered just exactly what it would take to make her lose her cool. He sure didn’t want to be there to find out, though.

Toasters and small appliances crashed to the floor as Blair cleared the workbench. He snatched the doll from Sam and placed it gingerly on the table. Grasping a scalpel from the nearby tray of supplies, he sliced open the doll’s chest with controlled recklessness.

Peering inside the incision, he announced, “I’ve got some bad news and some really bad news.” His tinny voice shook. He was glad now of the obscuring visor. “The bad news is the gas is corrosive. It’s eating our suits.”

Sam held up the assaulted hand. The rubber was beginning to bubble and corrode.

“What’s the really bad news?” Greg asked. Greg would.

Blair peeled back the doll’s chest, revealing an explosive device and 10 poison ampoules.

“Enough C-4 to blow up this building and enough poison gas to kill everybody still in it.” Blair figured by this time that meant just the four of them.

The exposed rubber was turning black, the stink worming its way inside their complex breathing apparatus.

“The acid’s eating...? It’s eating my fucking suit!”

Sam sounded more angry than panicked.

“Chill, Sam,” he ordered, not caring that “chill” was not a word found anywhere in the FBI handbook. “Serena! Where’re the Goddamn sprinklers?”

“I’m trying.” Over and over Greg flipped the switch that activated the sprinklers. The pipes knocked rhythmically. A few pathetic droplets trickled from the sprinkler heads onto theirs, dribbling in useless rivulets down the Kevlar helmets. “Something’s blocking the pipes, Blair. When in Christ’s name are they gonna give us a new building?”

Whoa. Blair instead of Dr. Sandburg. Don’t fail us now, Greg.

“Get the atropine, Sam.”

Blair marvelled at how calm Serena sounded, his mind wandering just a moment as he thought how aptly she’d been named: cool, calm, serene. Serena. “You, too, Blair.”

Sam, terrified, jerked open an overhead cabinet, revealing several six-inch syringes.

“Look after yourself, Sam. Don’t get one for me.”

“You die, we all die, Blair. Inject yourself, _then_ defuse it.”

He ignored Serena’s orders, continuing his detailed inspection of the device.

“Goddamn it, Blair, take the antidote! That’s an order.”

Okay. Now she sounded a bit tense.

Sam stumbled back to his side, fumbling with the huge syringe.

“Get that away from me. I hate needles. And I do not need any distractions right now!” His own wandering mind was enough.

“Inject yourselves. Both of you!” Serena ordered again. “Greg, where’s the Goddamned water and foam?”

The deluge outside was of biblical proportions, but could they get a little in here where they so desperately needed it? Apparently not, Blair thought with bitter irony.

Instead of panicking, as Blair had feared he might, Greg leapt into action. By banging on the ceiling pipes with a heavy-duty stapler and listening for the hollow feedback, he ascertained where in the pipes the blockage rested. Perching atop a filing cabinet, he fumbled with some sort of knob attached to the old pipes that ran along the ceiling to the chamber. The pipes ceased knocking and began to cough as if plumbing could have emphysema.

“It’s coming. It’s coming,” he called. He pounded repeatedly with the stapler on the welded join in the pipes where the dousing foam was added to plain old tap water. The coughing sound became more pronounced.

Sam sank to her knees, holding the huge syringe in front of her chest, her heart, hara-kiri style, hands trembling.

Blair concentrated on the device, barely keeping an incipient panic attack at bay. _Later, later._ He promised himself both a panic attack, and that he would, indeed, have a “later” _._ His hands flashed as he grabbed instruments and performed precise, deft motions. He snipped a red wire and spliced it to a blue one. Another. Another. Black and white. Black or white. Red, white and blue. That’s it! That’s the key. How come terrorists always seem to hate America? Even _American_ terrorists?

“Ten seconds, Blair.” Serena kept quiet count.

Sam moved the syringe closer to her chest, visions of _Pulp Fiction_ no doubt dancing in her head. She certainly had the hair for it.

“Five seconds, Blair. Four seconds, Jesus H. Christ…” Serena was a lot less serene now.

 _“Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck.”_ The profane litany fell softly from Sam’s pretty lips, shared unwittingly with all of them courtesy of the helmet’s built-in mike.

Blair’s rubber glove had stretched to transparency, his pinkish flesh visible through the acid-eaten rubber. He made a final cut-and-clamp, brain surgery on a rubber dolly. The detonator was deactivated.

And “Three, two… the gas is clear!” Greg had abandoned his file cabinet aerie for his workstation again.

“Next time, Sandburg, use the atropine!”

“I don’t like needles,” he repeated stubbornly.

Outside the gas chamber, green lights flashed on top of the control panel and the sprinklers finally spewed into action, gushing water and dousing them with foam and leaving them weak with laughter and relief.

They’d live.

 

  
**Chapter 2. Vanishing Act**

**Location: Fort Lewis Army Base, Washington State**

**Coast Time: Thursday, 5:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Thursday, 8:00 pm**

 

As if night wasn’t dark enough, heaven sent a torrential downpour to further dim the sliver of moon hanging above Fort Lewis Army Base near Tacoma. Heavy drops bounced from the asphalt, pinging against the hubcaps of the Army transport truck. The Conestoga-style cover sagged with dampness.

The driver cursed bad weather and blowouts as he fought the truck to a skidding halt. Flashlight in hand, he dropped from the cab directly into a puddle. More cursing as he ascertained the tire was, indeed, blown. He glanced over at the heavily guarded bunker facility nearby. No auto club for this lucky Marine. Be all you can be. He headed ’round back for the spare.

He opened the door and gave a thumbs-up, at which four Marines in black suits dove through a hole in the truck bed floor into a manhole in the road. It had been some excellent stunt driving that brought the sabotaged truck to a halt in exactly the right spot, directly over the sewer access.

He still had to change the tampered-with tire, though.

~~~

 “It’s an honour to see you here at Fort Lewis, General Oliver.” The MP’s plastic rain slicker crinkled loudly as he saluted before leaning into the window of the General’s black SUV. “Is Colonel Smith expecting you, sir?” The MP blinked rain from his lashes as he peered into the interior of the vehicle. Rain and bright lights glared and reflected harshly in the night. A single step backward returned him to the protective overhang of the guardhouse.

“He’d better not be,” Brigadier General Norman Oliver declared. “This is a _surprise_ security inspection.”

“Yes, sir!”

Oliver waited patiently while the gatehouse guard called for military escort.

Once they arrived, Oliver was waved on. In the night and the rain, the young guard saluted the back end of the SUV crisply.

At the main headquarters building, the MPs escorted the visiting general toward Colonel Smith’s office.

When they reached the main security room just outside Smith’s office three more Army guards sprang to attention, watching the famous General Oliver instead of their surveillance monitors.

Colonel Smith emerged a moment later from an adjacent room, a bit sleepy-eyed.

“General Oliver! This is a surprise!”

“That’s the idea, Colonel.” Oliver chuckled and reached out to shake his old colleague’s hand warmly. “It wouldn’t be a surprise inspection, Bill, if you knew I was coming, now, would it?”

~~~

Underneath the compound, the four Marines from the truck with the blowout waited, arms at the ready, having entered through a storm drain in the basement of the bunker. The drain’s grate had been carefully replaced. The leader checked his watch.

 _Now!_ He signalled the others and they headed up.

The four invading Marines emerged from the bunker and moved toward meticulously pre-planned positions in the compound.

Two of the men positioned themselves at the door to the compound’s elevated watchtower.

Below the watchtower, a pair of magazine checkers approached, rain slickers hanging damply as the downpour began to ease up. The Marines, M-16s equipped with grenade launchers, stayed hidden in the shadows. The launchers were loaded not with grenades, but beanbags: soft, pliable and forcefully efficient when launched with adequate force.

When the magazine checkers were at fairly close range, the Marines fired. The checkers collapsed, dazed. They were quickly handcuffed, with duct tape slapped across their mouths to ensure their silence, and dragged into the shadows where they wouldn’t be seen.

The remaining two outlaw Marines crept into the watchtower itself. The guards there didn’t have time to react and the beanbag projectiles knocked them out efficiently. Handcuffs and duct tape made a quick reappearance. The plan was being executed with perfect precision. Nobody had been permanently harmed, and there was nobody to interfere.

The first two Marines, now sporting the magazine checkers’ uniforms, moved to the bunker door. The door opened courtesy of purloined security cards.

Inside the bunker, the raiders in checkers’ clothing encountered two more Army guards. A vaccine pistol filled with a liberal dose of horse tranquilizer sent the unsuspecting guards off to dreamland.

~~~

Colonel Smith was enjoying his old friend’s visit. He and General Oliver had settled into his comfortably furnished office, chatting amiably over coffee. They were exchanging pleasantries about family health and bad weather when interrupted by a soft knock. A tall Marine he didn’t recognize stepped into the office, proceeding to the general and whispering in his ear.

Nodding and gesturing for the man to stand down, General Oliver announced: “Colonel Smith. As I mentioned at the outset of our little tête-à-tête, this is a surprise security exercise. I’d now like to report to you that we’ve fully breached and infiltrated your compound. I’m afraid you and your men are now my prisoners.” He smiled genially at his host.

Colonel Smith was indeed surprised. He ran a finger under his collar nervously. “Heh-heh. You always were a stickler, Norman.” He glanced down, taken aback when Oliver’s Marine moved quickly to his side and snapped a handcuff around his right wrist. “Is this really necessary? Really. You’re going too far. Just give me the report and I’ll make the required—”

The soldier fastened the other ring to the arm of the chair in which Smith sat immobile with uncertainty.

General Oliver remained silent, focused on Smith, his face inscrutable. Oliver’s Marine answered instead, his Australian accent seeming jarringly out of place for an American soldier. “Terribly sorry, sir. But the General feels strongly about the importance of these exercises.”

Smith was aware non-Americans were welcome in the U.S. military. It was just that he had so rarely encountered one. It was a bit unnerving in an already unsettling situation.

Three more Marines entered, also in invasion gear.

Oliver took advantage of his superior rank to gently order Smith’s confused guards to go sit by the radiator, to which his men quickly cuffed them. Any protests were overridden with the help of duct tape.

Colonel Smith seemed about to argue, but the Australian Marine held out a role of duct tape threateningly. Lifetime soldier that he was, Smith looked to his commanding officer for direction, understanding.

Oliver rose from his chair and reported formally to the handcuffed colonel: “Tonight, while you and I visited in here, four of my men were out there doing whatever they damn well pleased to your men and your compound.” Oliver sounded suddenly harsh. “They could just as easily been terrorists, Smith. And here you sit with your ass chained to a chair. This is not a tight ship!”

He rose, scorn seeping into his voice and expression. “I would not want to be in your shoes in the morning.”

Oliver exited Smith’s office, followed by his soldier.

 ~~~

Outside the rain had ceased, and weak moonlight reflected feebly from the wet tires of the arriving Army transport. Oliver watched from his SUV as the transport stopped at the gate just long enough to subdue the young guard, then drove brazenly into the compound through the gaping, unguarded gate.

Taking a moment to get his bearings, and recall the plans and drawings he’d memorized, Oliver headed toward bunker number seven.

He pulled up in front of the designated bunker, the transport pulling in beside him. The four soldiers had already crossed the compound on foot and were in position, flanking the doors of the bunker.

They entered quickly, General Oliver directing them to a small, refrigerated room housing chemical weapons. Their first target was the area containing the chem rounds: storage tubes marked “ _Ebola-hybrid Poison Gas”._ The chem rounds rested in pre-formed foam cases and were arranged along the walls like small coffins. Oliver’s men transferred six of these lethal tubes safely and efficiently onto the waiting transport.

Their next unimpeded stop was across the compound at another bunker, which rewarded them with an equal number of rockets and rocket launchers. Oliver directed his men to the rockets that had been designed to accommodate the chem round tubes containing the deadly gas.

“Excellent work, men,” Oliver praised before heading to his car. It seemed to him a sign from the heavens above that the rain had finally ceased and a bright moon shone down brightly on his operation.

The transport, followed by Oliver in his SUV, rumbled from the compound. The entire operation had been carefully planned, painstakingly rehearsed, and executed quickly and capably. They left like the thieves in the night that they were: anonymous men in Marine uniforms, among them an unknown Australian. Only General Oliver could be linked to this outrage, this act of terrorism against the American military.

 

 

**Chapter 3. Reunion**

**Location: Cascade, Washington**

**West Coast Time: Thursday, 8:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Thursday, 11:00 pm**

 

The area around Rainier University was considered pretty Bohemian… for Cascade. Having been, more or less, a student at Rainier from the young age of 16 to the grand old age of 29, Blair felt at home there among the students and scholars. “Nerds in the ’hood,” he’d been known to say. Still, it was home. And he fit right in, despite the coolness of being an FBI agent. He tended to keep that to himself. When asked he said he was a chemical engineer, and the conversation usually moved on from there without any mention of bio-terrorists or bombs, either dirty or smart.

The cleanup and debriefing after the afternoon’s incident had seemed to go on forever, and it was after 8:00 by the time he reached his neighbourhood. He was really looking forward to the downtime. The boss had given them all the next day off, thank God. They were all still on call, of course, in case of a whole new catastrophe.

He headed down an alley between two townhouses, rolling his eyes as sitar music floated from the loft above. Ravi Shankar on the box. He grinned tiredly. One good thing about being tied up with a life-threatening crisis all afternoon was that by the time he was ready to go home, the rain had finally stopped and a watery sun was sinking slowly toward the western horizon. He’d had enough of raindrops falling on his head for one day.

He climbed into the ageing elevator, punched buttons and waited for it to work, which, apparently, it was not going to do. A perfect end to a perfect day, he mused as he heaved his stressed-out body up the stairs to the fourth floor where loft-sweet-loft awaited. He sniffed, wishing he could identify some of the appetizing cooking smells that emanated from his home. If only he were a Sentinel, the subject of his first, still ABD doctorate until he’d given up on ever finding a research subject and moved on to the hard sciences.

“Hi, Naomi.”

Blair plunked himself on the sofa and watched his mother meditate, knowing she’d take a moment to surface. He hadn’t seen her in a while. She looked good, fit, tan, flexible. And nowhere near her 50 or so years of age.

He left off staring at his guest and surveyed his loft instead. She’d moved the furniture again. The living area had been re-defined by the fact that the couch had been moved. He marvelled a bit still that it had enough furniture to fill it now. A far cry from the days when he’d originally lived there as a squatter.

He noticed a hammer on the kitchen counter and glanced around nervously for further Naomi-wrought changes. Newly hanging over the sink was the plaque that declared this an historic building. He was proud of that and the fight with City Hall it represented. He’d been meaning to hang it up for a couple of years now. No wrecking ball would ever again threaten this grand old building.

He was also proud of the deal he’d struck with the disinterested owner. A mortgage had brought a level of fiscal maturity and a whole slew of roommates, but eventually he’d graduated, and as the bulk of the student loans had disappeared, so had the roommates. He’d lived alone for a little over a year now, and was both loving it and hating it.

Tonight he could have used a little alone time, but still, he wasn’t sorry Naomi had breezed into Cascade and availed herself of his hospitality. And his key. And his hand-made-by-Peruvian-virgins meditation mat.

Oh, well. Wasn’t the first time. Certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“Hey, there.” The just-in-from-Nirvana Naomi Sandburg was now standing next to the sofa, a warm and gentle hand on his shoulder. “Hey, honey. Rough day?”

“You would not begin to believe it.” He stretched stiffly, rubbed his temples. “But I really don’t want to discuss it.”

“Boy, somebody’s in a bad mood.”

“Yeah. And that would be me. I really had a bad day. Worse than most. And don’t say _anything_ about working with the pigs.”

Naomi drifted over to the stereo. Once state of the art, technology had outstripped it almost before the charge had hit Blair’s credit card. She swapped Ravi for a likeable CD from Blair’s extensive world music collection.

“Better?”

“Much. I didn’t know you were into Johnny Clegg.”

She joined him on the sofa, linking her arm through his. “I like lots of music, especially now that I’m in the business myself. But enough about me. What happened, Blair? Tell me.”

Reluctant to give his mother even the briefest rundown on his day, he merely responded, “Had a close one.”

“Poor baby. It’s that damn FBI. You can’t trust them, you know. Why, just last week I was reading in the…” Naomi had an infuriating habit of disappearing for months on end, with rarely a phone call, then breezing back into his life and trying to run it like he was still a little boy.

“You want to talk about it?” she was saying, having presumably wrapped up her tirade on the evil practices of the FBI.

“Not really.”

“You know how I feel about what you do, sweetie.”

“Could we change the subject?” Naomi was mercurial to say the least, so he knew she was entirely capable of moving from her unwelcome mother-henning right into good news. She didn’t disappoint him this time, and he was only too glad to tag along for a ride on her emotional roller coaster.

“Okay. I spoke with my friend Sid Graham at that record company and he’s convinced them to hear my demo tape, the ‘natural music for natural childbirth’ one. If it’s a big success, they’ll want the breastfeeding one as well.”

He was so glad to have gotten off the topic of his career choice that he was more than pleased (and only a bit uncomfortable) at having this particular conversation with his mother. “Hey! Now there’s some good news.”

“I was thinking of changing my name. Just for the album, mind you. Something less ethnic. Less…”

“…Jewish? C’mon, Mom. You always told me to be proud of my heritage. At least of the half I know about. Who’re those candidates for my paternal side again? Let’s see. There’s Jim Morrison. There’s Donovan Leitch. And let’s not forget Timothy Leary.”

“I told you, Blair, your father was a Jewish cop who left me for his partner. The only things you seem to have inherited from him are curly hair, blue eyes and a fondness for Alpaca sweaters. Your grandmother made up all that bullshit about famous fathers to cover her shame that her daughter got knocked up and deserted. She could hardly hold her head up at Shul.”

Blair chuckled. This was an ancient ritual to them. She’d raised him mostly on her own, with just a wee bit of help from the wealthy Sandburgs and Cohens of Cascade. He’d turned out all right, or so he thought anyway. Even Grandma Cohen seemed to agree, lording “my grandson the doctor _and_ FBI agent” over all the other bubbehs and zeydes.

“Naomi Sandburg is a great stage name.”

Naomi smiled, unlinked her arm from his (which was good because his was starting to fall asleep) and patted his long, unruly curls. “I hope you’re being sincere. I could change my name. How about ‘Naomi Earthchild’?”

No way Blair was taking any of this seriously, not after the day he’d had. “How ’bout just ‘Naomi’. Like just Cher? Or Naomi Carriage. It’ll be great on the birthing tape, won’t it _‘Miss Carriage’_?”

He was having far too much fun with this now. Naomi pressed her lips together in disapproval. Blair knew her well enough to know that she was trying to keep from laughing. “Wait! Wait! I got it. ‘And this moment of tranquility is brought to you by Naomi Crapswithwolves. The screaming may now commence.’”

Naomi drew back from Blair far enough to clap slowly. “I see I’m not the only performer in the family. You’ve made your point. I’ll stick with Naomi Sandburg.”

The oven pinged its readiness. Blair set the table while Naomi served.

“Oh, boy, Mom. Tongue. My favourite. Pass the ketchup, please.”

And for a few safe moments, he was happy to be Naomi’s little boy again.

 

**Chapter 4. Storm Warning**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Friday, 10:00 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Friday, 1:00 pm**

 

“Hi and welcome to the Cascade Correctional Center here on Storm Island. I’m Ranger Summers, but you can call me Ted. Our tour will take a little over two hours. The rest rooms are located here in the Ranger Station, so if you have to go…” Ted’s ears always grew warm when he said this. “No one? Good. Okay, ladies and gents, please follow me and we’ll begin our tour.”

The bright morning sunshine glinted from Ted’s mirror shades as he led today’s group of tourists from the Parks and Rec office toward the prison compound. He stopped them about halfway, directing them to look back toward the bay they’d just crossed by ferry.

“As I just mentioned, the rock formation on which we’re standing is called Storm Island, and it’s located just across the bay from the bustling industrial city of Cascade.”

He went on to give them a brief overview Cascade, Washington. He was careful to differentiate Washington State from Washington, D.C. He’d been asked too many times if you could see the White House from here. Sure, he could understand this coming from foreign visitors, but he was always shocked when Americans asked him that! Nobody asked that today, though.

“Above the city itself, you can observe the crests of the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges that line the Puget Sound basin and define the extent of our watershed.”

The tourists peered dutifully at the mainland again, this time to observe Ted’s crests and ranges.

Next, he led his charges to the main prison building, stopping them at the entrance that had been cut into the solid rock. “The history of Storm Island and its vast system of tunnels and caves dates back millions of years.” He tapped on the rock with his clipboard, which was starting to look the worse for wear.

“These mountain ranges were formed where large plates of the earth’s crustal material collided.” He really liked the word “crustal” and managed to work it into nearly every lecture. “Areas of volcanic activity dotted the Cascades, raising large volcanic cones such as Rainier and Baker.”

He sped through this part, fearful of losing his audience, but it was early enough in the tour that most people were still listening.

“After erosion, deposition and plate tectonics had worked the landscape of our region…”

He spoke some more about sedimentation, glaciation and pressure before leaving behind his personal area of interest as a geology major and moved both the group and the lecture on to the part his audience always seemed to find fascinating.

He opened the first set of barred doors with great showmanship, waited for the tourists to head on in, then clanged them closed behind everyone. The group, like all the others before it, milled nervously around the massive prisoner intake area, barred doors behind them, barred doors before them. The chamber’s solid rock walls echoed every whisper.

“Some of the prison, as well as its vast underground tunnel system, was formed in the rock naturally, then the existing coastal caves were expanded by man, usually by a bunch of murderous locals.”

He had the rapt attention of his audience now.

“In previous centuries, a group of unscrupulous settlers constructed a false lighthouse on the rocks well back from the shoreline. This fake beacon fooled ships into believing they were heading for safe harbour. Instead the early wooden vessels would end up ripped apart on the rocks and the residents would salvage the goods, enslaving or killing any survivors.”

The tourists tended to draw in closer at this point, hanging on Ted’s every word. Why they weren’t equally fascinated by the stuff about plate tectonics was beyond him.

“The island was later used as a fort by the military during skirmishes with the local Indian tribes. Even pirates and privateers hid from the authorities here.”

Ted did love this part of the tour, though.

“Its most recent use, prior to becoming an official American prison, was during the 1920s prohibition period, when it was used for the illegal manufacture and distribution of alcohol.”

“I could sure use a drink myself, right about now,” one of the tourists interjected with a chuckle. They usually did.

 

Ted acknowledged the witticism with a small smile and continued, “Storm Island has, indeed, served a number of unsavoury purposes over the course of its history. In short, it’s the perfect place for carrying out illegal and illicit activities.” He raised his voice a bit for effect. “So it seems only fitting that the Island’s most recent use— the facility we’re touring today— was as a place to punish and hopefully rehabilitate those who had committed crimes against our American society.”

He nodded to the smattering of clapping before leading his audience down several rows of cells. The next bit of his speech was broken up into cleverly planned sound bites to allow the group to travel from place to place without missing any vital facts.

He next halted them for more lecture in the facility’s main kitchens.

“Here’s where hundreds of meals were prepared each day to feed the men incarcerated in one of the Pacific North West’s most famous prisons.” Damn. He was supposed to say “infamous”, not “famous”. Oh, well. It’s not like the tourists noticed. He’d correct it in the next factoid.

“The Cascade Correctional Center, usually called ‘Triple-C’ by its inmates, was among the most infamous, and was the most feared prison ever built. If you look out the windows on your left, you’ll see the exercise yard…” He motioned toward the far windows, his gesture reminiscent of a flight attendant’s practised routine. “The inmates were permitted one hour of daily exercise.”

“Excuse me, Ranger Fred?” A pretty young woman with a small boy in tow interrupted. “Is it really true no one escaped?”

“Yes, ma’am. From 1936 until the prison’s closure there were 14 attempts, but no one’s believed to have made it to shore. Not alive, anyway. And it’s ‘Ranger Ted’, ma’am.”

The tourists shuffled down another row of cells. It was a small group, maybe two dozen. Hanging at the back of the assemblage was a knot of six people, five men and an attractive woman. Ted had noticed them early on because they didn’t ask questions, didn’t even seem to chat amongst themselves. They all appeared to have military bearing, despite the civilian clothes.

“Excuse me, Ranger.” Except one of them was asking a question now. Ted was surprised at the Australian accent. He’d never really thought about the Aussies having a military. Who’d attack them? “Where’s the little prisoner’s room?” The Aussie’s smile and tone were almost mocking. It made Ted a little nervous.

Damn. Now he’d have to wait for the stragglers. It would throw the pacing of the whole tour off while he slowed it down so they could catch up. Couldn’t they wait? He sighed audibly and answered. “It’s back at the Ranger Station, sir. Where we started.” Ted pointed back toward the closed gate. “Let me get that for you.”

“No need, son,” the man replied. “I watched how you closed it. It’s not locked.” Oddly, Ted felt like he’d been judged and dismissed.

He watched as three of the men bled off from the group, heading back the way they’d just come.

Slowly— he’d have to do everything slowly until they rejoined the group— he headed for the inside gate and shoved it aside, ushering the remaining tourist into the main areas that housed the prisoners.

Having reached the main cellblocks, Ted lectured, “These are cell blocks ‘B’ and ‘C’, which the inmates liked to call ‘Birdman Lane’ and ‘Capone Alley’, after two of the most notorious criminals to ever be guests of the U.S. penal system.”

Ted led his charges down a long corridor with three tiers of cells on each side.

Having skilfully manoeuvred the group exactly where he wanted them, Ted yanked down hard on a large metal lever protruding from the wall at the end of cellblock. All the cell doors on the first floor slid open, some more smoothly than others.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. Park Service cordially invites you to become inmates of the Cascade Correctional Center. Temporarily, of course.”

The tourists laughed and moved inside the waiting cells.

 ~~~

Enjoying the glorious mid-summer day, Scott Bruenell and his two compatriots strolled across the compound toward the former gatehouse, which now served as the Park Service offices.

As they entered, two park rangers and a student-trainee glanced up curiously.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. You’re really not supposed to leave the tour. Is there a problem?”

“There’s a big problem, I’m afraid,” Bruenell said ominously, his Australian accent lending a pleasant lilt to his cryptic words. “You’d better come with us.”

Three military-issue handguns were trained on the Rangers, just to be really clear.

 ~~~

The three other standoffish tourists had entered a cell and then departed quickly, eschewing the full prison experience.

“Don’t want to be locked up, fellahs? Ma’am?” Ted tipped his ranger cap and the woman smiled winsomely.

“Not today,” one man answered. “But you go ahead, son. Ms. Sarris, Mr. Zeller and I will wait here. Right? He looked at the woman.”

“Right, Gen… I mean _Mister_ Oliver.” For some reason she found this amusing.

“Oh, no, sir. It’s my job to wait out here and escort everyone back.” Ted laughed nervously.

“C’mon, Ted. I think it’d be good for you to get the full tour experience. Don’t you?”

Ted felt cold, despite the man’s warm smile.

“I don’t think so.” Ted took a shaky step backward.

The man referred to as Zeller drew a .45 and aimed it at Ted’s head, point blank. “Ah,” he said, with a thick German accent. “But I do think so.”

Ms. Sarris giggled, then slapped a hand over her mouth at Oliver’s glare.

Startled into silence, Ted was backed into a cell without any of the tourists even noticing. Handing Oliver his gun, Zeller first removed Ted’s two-way radio, then walked over to the control panel. Studying it a moment, he grasped the protruding lever and shoved it up into its closed position. The cell doors clanged shut. Laying the pistol to his lips like a cold metal finger, Oliver mimed “quiet” at Ranger Ted, who nodded fearful understanding.

Oliver returned Zeller’s sidearm as they silently walked away. Oliver smiled at him reassuringly and Ms. Sarris turned back and blew Ranger Ted a kiss.

Ted sat shaking in his cell, trying to formulate a plan to alert his superiors of the situation without distressing the tourists. A few moments passed. The tourists had assumed the closing doors were part of the tour at first, but after a few minutes, shouts and calls of “Hey!” and “What’s going on?” and “I demand a refund!” echoed down the deserted corridors.

 ~~~

Oliver, Zeller and Sarris arrived at the main compound just as a Huey helicopter approached the island. It hovered momentarily, stirring up a whirlwind of dust as it landed on the asphalt. Oliver watched as another of his hand-picked soldiers, Captain Garrett Kincaid, dashed from the chopper, staying low to avoid the blades. Kincaid carried a cooler bag about the size and shape of a large gym bag. In it were three of the six stolen Ebola-hybrid chem rounds.

Once clear of the chopper and its own personal twister, Kincaid carefully lowered the bag to the compound floor, then snapped smartly to attention, saluting his superior officers. “Captain Kincaid reporting, sir.” He could not be heard over the noise of the Huey.

Right on schedule, the three remaining members of the little team of rogue Marines re-crossed the compound to arrive at the makeshift helicopter pad. Sergeant Bruenell and his two comrades, Privates Warren Chapel and Dawson Quinn, also stood at attention until Oliver released them.

Leaving the cooler bag on the ground, Kincaid and the other Marines formed a line and rapidly offloaded the rest of the cargo, including rockets and rocket launchers, satellite tracking gear, supplies, and everything else they’d need to set up a mobile state of the art command centre.

Once clear, Oliver signalled the pilot to take off around the back of the island where the Huey would be observed by neither eyes nor radar.

Each Marine, including the general himself, grabbed a predesignated load and headed for the prison’s main building. It was there that they’d set up their provisional headquarters. The general took responsibility for the two bags containing the poison chem round tubes.

Arriving at the main building, each soldier, being more than familiar with the plan, began his or her assigned tasks. The infirmary room upstairs became their command and communications centre. Quinn and Chapel set up a portable desk, chair, and an array of communications equipment including transportable satellite dish and other lookout devices. While the two privates set up, Kincaid and Bruenell headed out to install motion sensors around the perimeter and certain other key areas.

It had previously been ascertained that the best place to keep the rockets and their dangerous Ebola-hybrid chem rounds was in the prison morgue. The morgue’s cooling system proved to be still working, despite five years of disuse. It seemed morbidly appropriate to keep the most dangerous weapons on earth in a place designed to house the dead.

Chapel and Quinn loaded the Ebola-hybrid gas chem rounds from the insulated cooler bag into the morgue’s corpse drawers. They would rest there safely until they could be deployed at the predetermined stations around the island pointing toward Cascade.

Zeller set up a portable rocket launcher on the watchtower while Kincaid set up a second one in another crucial location.

 ~~~

The tourists were well and truly panicked by now, confused, shouting and yelling. A child howled.

Suddenly a shot erupted, silencing the commotion. Having left the final set-up preparations in capable hands, Oliver and Zeller had returned to their prisoners. They walked to the middle of the cellblock followed by Privates Quinn and Chapel, who were towing an old and dented hospital gurney stacked with Marine field rations.

 

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen. You are my prisoners. I have no intention of harming you. You will be fed regularly. The toilets are quite handy, and some of them might still work. That is all you need to know for now.”

Quinn and Chapel began passing out the field rations to the frightened crowd.

 

 

**Chapter 5. Ice Man**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Friday, 3:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Friday, 6:00 pm**

 

“Maybe then I can get the fuck out of Washington State and back to where the action is, in the real Washington. D.C., that is.”

FBI Special Agent in Charge Lee Brackett twisted his chair to one side as he leaned toward his speakerphone. “Nothing ever happens here in Cascade.”

His familiar complaint was interrupted by a polite knock. Without waiting for acknowledgement, his administrative assistant cracked the big oak door and stuck her head around. “Call for you, sir.”

He hit the hold button. “Can’t it wait till morning, Rhonda? I’ve got Springsteen tickets and I’m already running late. I’ve still got to drive to Seattle, you know.” Since she’d obtained the tickets for him, he was pretty sure she knew this.

“I really think you should take this call personally, Lee.” She withdrew her head without waiting for an answer, thereby forcing him to take the call. He wondered what could be so urgent that she’d use his first name to get his attention.

Chuckling, he picked up the receiver. Rhonda’s skill at quiet manipulation was his favourite thing about her. Except when she used it on him. “Something’s come up. I’ll have to call you back,” he told his first call. Disengaging, he answered the second. “Brackett.”

“First, I am holding 18 tourists and four Parks Department staff on Storm Island. That is a total of 22 civilian hostages. Make an excuse to their families and do not alert the media or there will not be 22 any more. Second—”

“Who is this?” Brackett cut in. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“Second,” the caller repeated, “my men and I visited Fort Lewis last evening. You already know this to be true.”

Brackett sat up straight, icy tendrils snaking down his spine. He had, indeed, been briefed about the break-in and its deadly potential consequence. The media, however, had not been notified.

“While we were there, we liberated a number of guided rockets as well as the Ebola-hybrid gas chem rounds they were designed to hold. Three of these poison rockets are now aimed at Cascade. You will arrange with the Pentagon to take my call at oh-twelve-hundred hours West Coast time and hear my demands.”

“Wait.” FBI training kicked in, and Brackett immediately began taking the call seriously; for the time being, anyway. “Who is this?”

“Brigadier General Norman Oliver.”

Oh, shit! Not Oliver! Gone rogue. Brackett stared at the phone. With some fast and fancy fingerwork, he put Oliver on hold and hit the intercom button, shouting “Rhonda! Get this call traced and then get me the Pentagon!”

“Already on it, sir.”

He’d known he could count on her. Brackett re-engaged the general’s line, hoping that the man hadn’t noticed he was gone.

“Uh, General,” he stalled. “They’ll want to know why we’re calling, sir. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them I’m calling from Storm Island. Triple-C has just re-opened for business!”

The line went dead.

 ~~~

Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered in through the heavily barred windows of Triple-C’s infirmary, which now served as Oliver’s command centre. Captains Sarris and Kincaid and Sergeant Bruenell stood at attention before Major Zeller and General Oliver: a very small parade. Oliver had sent Private Chapel to the morgue to guard the chem rounds, while Private Quinn was out walking the perimeter. The rogue party of seven were all present or otherwise accounted for.

“At ease, gentlemen. Captain Sarris,” Oliver commanded, pleased with the military discipline with which his team was conducting themselves. He’d feared a loss of control once they’d crossed that line into insurgency.

Drawing himself up, he continued, “It is traditional for me to meet with my officers before an operation.” He paced a few steps to the right, then back. “The heart performs one function, the legs another, the brain another… All had better function together or the body moves out of synchronization, becomes prone to disease.”

He gestured toward Major Zeller. “Major Zeller, Sergeant Bruenell and I have been on the front lines since ’Nam. Captain Kincaid was my adjutant in the Gulf. Captain Kincaid. Your men are new to me.”

“Would the General like a recitation of their service records?” Kincaid offered.

“I’m well aware of their service records, Captain. They’re excellent, or they wouldn’t be here with us today.” He paced a few more steps, then returned to the front of the room. “I want to be clear on why you— why all of us are here. You all stand to profit from this.”

“Profit was not _my_ motive, sir.” Captain Kincaid had said this before. “I am here to redress a wrong. And to learn some people a lesson.”

Oliver had gone over this with the group before. Kincaid was loyal, dependable and thick as a plank. “This country has places where wrongs are redressed, Captain. They’re called courts of law. In the military, they’re called Courts Martial. This country has places where lessons are learned. They are called schools. Am I confusing you?”

Kincaid looked nervous, probably sorry he’d spoken at all. Oliver stared down at him, waiting for an answer. “Well, sir. Frankly, I—”

“I see that I am,” Oliver cut in. Intimidation worked well at managing a certain type of soldier.

Standing directly in front of Kincaid, he addressed them all. “The only accurate term for what we were doing here is _treason!_ Plain and simple. An insurrection against a government to which we have all sworn allegiance. Everyone in this room must understand this.” They should all have damn well understood it long before getting this far, Oliver grumbled to himself.

He looked from face to face, studying each in turn.

“The question is, what kind of traitor are you? Coward or lion? Benedict Arnold or Thomas Jefferson? I have posed this question to myself. I have answered it and my conscience is clear.” He paused for effect, meeting each person’s eyes one after the other. “Have all of you?”

 _“Yes, sir!”_ Oliver’s soldiers chorused.

That was what he wanted to hear. “Within 32 hours you will leave this country and not return. Can you live with that? All of you?” He played his soldiers like the fine instruments that they were.

“Yes, sir!”

“Well, I cannot.” Shock and surprise registered on the faces of the team, but no one moved out of parade rest, not a muscle.

“So, regardless of what happens on this island in the hours ahead, I will stay.”

“But, General, you’ll be prosecuted.” Bruenell said softly, confusion in his voice. The others nodded; he spoke for them all.

“Yes, Sergeant. And I plan on conducting my own defence. It will make the O.J. Simpson trial look like an episode of ‘Perry Mason’.” Oliver smiled grimly at his compatriots. “Take your posts, gentlemen. Lady. _Semper fi. And dis-missed!”_

The surprised but well-trained soldiers fell out and headed for their assigned positions. Zeller, Oliver’s oldest friend, was the last to exit. He paused in the infirmary doorway and turned back, saluting Oliver crisply, eyes filled with admiration.

Knowing Zeller as well as he did, Oliver knew he didn’t believe the self-sacrifice bullshit for a second.

“Don’t worry, Klaus. This isn’t some scheme whereby I end up with more than my share of the cash.”

Zeller smiled at his old friend, but his icy eyes narrowed with suspicion.

 

 

**Chapter 6. The Waiting Room**

**Location: Washington, D.C.** ****

**West Coast Time: Friday, 8:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Friday, 11:00 pm**

 

White House Chief of Staff Simon Banks surveyed the noisy room. The Pentagon’s Situation Room “B” was a hive of activity as assistants and adjutants prepared the technology and the refreshments for the highest level of meeting. A broad array of fiercely important men and women gathered around a large boardroom table, each with a dossier on Brigadier General Norman Oliver.

A copy of the dossier contents had also been emailed by secure line to Special Agent in Charge Brackett at the FBI’s Cascade field office. This was the first time Brackett had been invited to participate in such a high-level event, and to Bank’s astute eye the agent appeared nervous. It was fairly easy to spot the anxious gestures since his image was teleconferenced onto the six-foot flat screen on one wall. The colour was a bit off so he looked more than a little green.

Banks took silent roll call, checking off names on the typed list of attendees his assistant had placed before him. Seated around the table was an illustrious group indeed, comprised of National Security Advisor Jack Kelso, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Navy General Joel Taggart, Air Force General Sarah Finkelman, and CIA Acting Assistant Director Cassie Wells. Brackett was right to be nervous.

This was not the first time members of this group had gathered around this table. Although the circumstances were grim, some warm greetings of genuine fondness were exchanged.

Cassie Wells explained loudly that CIA Director Welsh’s chemo was going well and that she was just keeping his seat warm until his return.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats,” Banks called. “Our briefing will now begin.” He waited impatiently while an adjutant performed a perfunctory sound check, receiving an affirmative response from Brackett indicating he too had both sound and visual back in Cascade.

As highest-ranking official, General Taggart began the proceedings.

“As you know from previous secure communication, our military compound in Cascade, Washington was breached last night. It has now been confirmed that General Norman Oliver and a small group of Marines, under the guise of a security exercise, walked off with six Ebola-hybrid gas rockets. It wasn’t discovered until the shift change this morning.”

The projected image split in two: Brackett live on the left, a still photo on the right of a younger Oliver in Vietnam.

“Here is Norman Oliver in Vietnam. Straight out of West Point, top of his class. He’d made Major by the end of his second tour, I believe.”

Another picture flashed up— a home slide show at the Oliver household. It showed the Marine a few years later, a little less hair, a few more lines around his eyes. “This is Oliver in Peru. A colonel then.”

There were more shots of Oliver in various international theatres.

Simon Banks took over the briefing, gesturing with an unlit cigar. “Two tours in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm. Three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, and…” He flipped the page of his briefing document. “The Congressional Medal of… _Jesus!”_ Simon’s gaze travelled from the briefing book open on the table before him to the looming images above his head. “The man’s a hero.”

General Taggart took back the floor. “More than a hero. A virtual legend. During the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, he single-handedly held off a brigade of Viet Cong. Saved his whole company. Hence the nickname ‘Cowboy’.”

“‘Cowboy’?” Wells queried.

“He did tend to go off and do his own thing. Fortunately for his career, he was usually able to explain it as a different interpretation of his orders. Plus he seemed to inspire dogged devotion among his men.”

“What was this book Oliver wrote on Vietnam? Anybody read it?” Brackett’s voice sounded harsh, tinny over the speakerphone.

“No.” Banks was the first to admit he hadn’t. “I’ve been meaning to. Give me the skinny.”

The others looked to Jack Kelso, knowing this was exactly the kind of reading he found intriguing. Kelso rolled his wheelchair a bit closer to the boardroom table. “The ‘skinny’, Mr. Banks, is that the U.S. should have either escalated the war until we’d won it or gotten the hell out of Vietnam and stopped wasting American lives.” He sighed and ran a hand across the gleaming mahogany before him. His eyes made the rounds, meeting each person’s and holding it for a long moment. “I happen to share General Oliver’s view.”

A discreet tap and the Situation Room door opened. A naval attaché poked his head in.

“It’s him.” The attaché strode quickly to the speakerphone and pressed two buttons in succession. “General Oliver?”

“This is Oliver.”

The attaché slipped unobtrusively out again.

“Norman? Joel Taggart here.”

“Hello, Joel. How’re Mabel and the kids?”

Taggart looked uncomfortably at the people around him. “They’re fine, thanks for asking, Norm. Uhhh. Norm… General. I’m here with General Finkelman, Chief of Staff Banks, Security Advisor Kelso, and CIA AD Wells, plus FBI Special Agent in Charge Brackett of the Cascade office by satellite. You’ve got a lot of people worried, Norman. Can you help us out?”

“I’ll come straight to the point, General Taggart. Eighty-three force reconnaissance Marines have died under my various commands, including 47 in Northern Laos and Southern China, seven in Peru. ”

“China? Peru? We’ve never admitted we sent troops into either of those places.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Banks put his unlit cigar in his mouth, switched it to the opposite side and removed it again.

“Who said that?” Oliver ordered, having audio only at his field command centre on Storm Island. “Identify yourself.”

Everyone stared at Wells, including Brackett’s huge televised image.

“CIA Assistant Director Cassie Wells, General.” She identified herself in a steady voice. “Acting.”

“How old are you, _Acting_ Assistant Director Wells?”

She glanced at Taggart for direction. He nodded. “I’m 33.”

“Well, Acting Assistant Director Wells, by the time you lost your virginity…”

Wells’ face turned the unnatural crimson of her shoulder-length curls. She sputtered something, cutting off one or two of Oliver’s words since the Pentagon had the coaxial override on the speakerphone. Banks gestured for silence. It was crucial they hear every word Oliver had to say.

“…and I’d led over two hundred incursions into China, Peru, Laos and a number of other places we’ve never admitted to being in. I’ve personally killed that many of the enemy.”

“Well. It’s just that…” Wells twirled one fat curl around her middle finger. “We’re trying to get a true picture here, General.”

“General Taggart. Might I ask you a favour?”

“Uhhh. Go ahead, Norman. Uhhh. General.”

“Thank you, Joel. Would you please have one of your attachés go and get some industrial-strength tape— packing, scotch, duct— doesn’t matter. And put some over Ms. Wells’ big, fat, ignorant mouth. She obviously has shit for brains and is wasting my valuable time.”

Banks didn’t remember Oliver being this volatile. When had he cracked and why hadn’t anybody noticed?

“Are you going to let him speak to me like that?” Cassie huffed. “Why, I never…”

Banks was seriously considering Oliver’s suggestion just as the naval attaché entered again, handing him a phone receiver, whispering just loud enough for everyone, no doubt Brackett and Oliver included, to hear: “The President calling from Moscow. _The President.”_

Banks walked to the far corner of the room with the phone, speaking in hushed tones _._ He indicated to Taggart to continue, trying to wrap up the call quickly so he wouldn’t miss anything important. Of necessity, he divided his attention between the President and the proceedings.

With a glance in his direction, Taggart focussed their attention back on Oliver. “Sorry for the, uh, unavoidable interruption. Please continue, General.”

Drawing a deep breath, audible even over the field phone line, Oliver did so. “Eighteen others died in covert, illegal operations in Chile and El Salvador. Remember the Gulf War? Those pretty ‘smart bombs’ pictured on CNN? My men lased those targets. Ten of those men _—my men!—_ were left to rot outside Baghdad when the conflict ended. And let’s not even mention Mogadishu. No benefits were paid to their families. No medals conferred. These men died for their country and they weren’t even given a Goddamn military burial!”

There was some whispering among those seated around the table, some self-conscious shuffling of feet. No one denied Oliver’s accusations.

Banks returned to the table quietly, prepared to speak for the President if need be. Even if he personally felt that course of action to be… ill-advised.

“This situation will not stand,” continued Oliver. “You will transfer one hundred million dollars from an account of the Red Sea Trading Company to an account I designate. From these funds, reparations of one million dollars will be paid to each of the 83 Marines’ families. The rest of the money will pay for my outfit’s expenses. Am I clear?”

“Except for the Red Sea Trading Company,” Brackett said. “What’s that?”

“Identify yourself.”

“FBI Special Agent in Charge Brackett, via satellite from Cascade, General.”

“Then you’ll be particularly interested, Director. It’s a slush fund held in a tax-free account in the Grand Caymans. It’s where the Pentagon keeps proceeds from illegal arms sales.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Norman,” Taggart hissed between clenched teeth. “That’s classified information!”

Banks kept a close eye on Brackett. The man looked canny for a brief moment before sliding a practiced look of surprise over his features. “Is it true?”

General Taggart, embarrassed, nodded yes.

Oliver resumed, coolly. “If you want the money back, you’ll have to tell the Attorney General and the boys down at Justice where it came from. Good luck.”

“General Oliver,” Banks began. “I’ve just spoken to the President and he was clear as hell on this. We will not negotiate with you and we do not care if—”

Kelso made slashing motions across his throat indicating to Banks to shut up.

Pausing at that, Banks began again. “But the—”

General Taggart cut him off by the simple expedient of reaching the phone base and pressing mute.

“But the President…” Then Banks took a deep breath and nodded, re-seating himself at the table. It would wait. It would have to. Right now, Oliver held all the cards.

In response to Banks’ interruption, Oliver drawled, “If there’s any of that tape left over from gagging Ms. Wells, please use it on Mr. ‘I-speak-for-the-President’, too. Won’t negotiate, my ass.”

Taggart grabbed Banks’ arm and practically dragged him back into his seat. Cassie Wells smirked a little.

General Oliver continued, his voice no longer friendly at all. “Now here’s what we’re going to do. And I suggest you pay attention. If you alert the media, I launch the gas. If you refuse payment, I launch the gas. Now, it’s just after twenty hundred hours local time. You have 36 hours. I repeat, you have until oh-eight hundred Sunday morning to deliver on my demands. That’s West Coast time. If you want the hostages and the citizens of Cascade to remain unharmed, you will transfer the money as requested. Do not even consider the standard counter-measure, General.”

Oliver disconnected the call without waiting for further discussion.

Stunned silence reigned for maybe 20 seconds. Still officially in charge, Taggart was first to speak. “What’s the potential casualty rate of a single rocket armed with Ebola-hybrid gas, General Finkelman?”

Finkelman flipped quickly through her briefing file. “In a dense urban area, 60, 70—”

“Well, that’s not so bad…” Cassie Wells interjected hopefully.

“—thousand. Seventy thousand. Dead. One teaspoon will kill all living organisms in a three-storey office building. Get the point?” From Finkelman’s expression of annoyance, Banks figured she might just have been wishing for that duct tape, too.

Sixty or seventy _thousand?_ The table erupted in a din of individual conversations— _very_ individual, since everyone was talking and no one listening.

“All right. All right!” For one surreal moment Banks considered banging his shoe on the table to regain the group’s attention. “Let’s have some order here, please.” He looked at his watch. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s adjourn now to confer with our own people, and meet back here in one hour.”

The country’s top officials gathered papers and grabbed cell phones as they headed to the situation room door.

“And people,” Taggart stopped them momentarily. “Let’s meet back here with some answers!”

 ~~~

An hour later they reassembled, this time covering the table with printouts and laptops bearing facts and figures, specs and scenarios. The fact-finding had just begun.

“What did Oliver mean by ‘standard counter-measure’, General?” Brackett inquired almost immediately.

“Napalm,” Finkelman responded. Conversation faltered and all eyes turned her way at the very mention of this horrific chemical. “Standard poison gas can be neutralized by napalm.”

“How’s it work?”

Kelso jumped in, quickly rendering the technicalities of chemistry into lay-speak, an ability that had made his books overnight bestsellers. “Napalm is the one chemical that burns hot enough to destroy other deadly substances.”

“So… napalm’s our solution?” Banks asked, feeling really uncomfortable with the concept. He’d grown up in the ’60s, after all.

“Sometimes,” Finkelman answered him. “Maybe even most times, but not this time.” She turned back to Taggart. “The problem is that this is a hybrid of the Ebola virus that’s been suspended in hydrogen to form a gas. It’s 10 times more toxic than standard poison gases _and_ designed to withstand napalm. Oliver must know about willy peter, General.”

“’Course he does,” Taggart snorted. He turned to the group, explaining, “‘willy peter’ is short for ‘white phosphorous incendiary device’. “It’s still very much at the testing phase, but it’s designed to detonate at six thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It’s hot enough to burn up this fancy Ebola-hybrid gas.”

Realization dawned on his face like an overcast morning. “That explains Oliver’s time frame. He knows we’re not operational yet. What would it take to get willy peter up and running, Sarah?”

“To equip a flight of F-16s with willy peter in 36 hours? An act of God.” Finkelman paused, no doubt mentally double-checking her facts. “Nothing less.”

“We can try,” Taggart continued. “But view the use of willy peter as a secondary initiative. Not only is it not yet ready for use, but to use it would mean the deaths of everyone on that island: renegades, hostages and any incursion team we might send in. No matter how fast we act, the Ebola-hybrid gas is going to do some damage. Then the willy peter is going to do even more. It’s a desperate measure, people, not a solution to our problem.”

“Desperate times can lead to desperate measures. Let’s hope we won’t have to use the stuff,” Simon Banks said fervently.

“Do we have a primary initiative then, gentlemen?” Kelso brought them back on track.

“We have a another idea, yes,” Taggart answered. “There’s an excellent Navy base in Seattle. I’ll have a team of SEALs on the job in two hours.”

Trained SEALs? Banks thought tiredly. What the hell for? He tossed his damp cigar into a nearby wastebasket in disgust.

“Special Agent Brackett!” Brackett started visibly at the unexpected bark from Taggart. “There’s no time to get someone out there from Quantico. Who’s the best bio-chemical expert in Cascade?”

“I’ve got that right here, sir.” Brackett rifled through papers quickly. “Here it is. Sandburg. Dr. Blair Sandburg. Whole bunch of letters after her name. She’s very, very good,” he told the camera sincerely.

Banks rolled his eyes. He could tell Brackett was posturing—probably never met the woman before. He just hoped Brackett wasn’t wrong about her skills.

“Email us her particulars via secure line and get her onside immediately.”

“Right away. I’m sure she’s just dying to help out.”

“In the meantime, let’s get that Navy SEAL commander on the line via satellite.”

An assistant stepped quickly up to the video-conferencing equipment, doing something with buttons and dials. The face of a strong and attractive woman appeared digitally on the screen before the Washington dignitaries.

“Good evening, sirs. I’m Commander Connor and I have what I believe is valuable information for you.”

 

  
**Chapter 7. Night Shift**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Friday, 9:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 12:00 am**

**Time Remaining: 35 hours**

 

One of the first things Blair had done when he’d become owner of his loft was to install a second-hand spiral staircase to an existing skylight. When he was an undergrad, he’d spent two summers at a sheet metal plant learning metalwork and welding and so was able to re-shape the iron into a serviceable stairway to heaven, or at least to the ceiling. He’d reframed and hinged the skylight, thereby gaining access to the building’s rooftop. Hardly a rooftop garden, though over the years he’d stuck a chair or two, a small table and a couple of plants around the area. It remained a barren place of cement and tarpaper and gravel, but he loved to be able to get out and observe his city from above.

A strong metal railing rimmed the entire rooftop. In deference to his fear of heights, he’d had to pay a professional welder to install it for him.

Tonight candles burned and a clavichord version of Handel’s _Water Music_ trickled from an overused boom box. Classical, jazz, world beat, new age, acid house, rap. This poor piece of electronics had played it all, and was just a little the worse for wear. Old world met new in a convenient mix of technology and antiquity. To Blair the clavichord sounded tinny by nature, and so played pretty much the same on any sound system.

Swaying slightly, unconsciously, to Handel’s charms, Naomi and Blair meditated together, perched side by side, one facing east, one facing west. A colourful blanket provided a thin barrier between their full lotus stances and the harsh and dirty rooftop. The blanket had been a treasured gift to Blair from an indigenous family he’d met on an expedition to Peru. He was a trifle pissed that his mom had cheerfully hauled it out on the roof and laid it on the ageing cement.

Each Sandburg wore a new African-style, made-in-Thailand dashiki that Naomi had brought with her this visit. Despite the 100% cotton fibre content declared on the label, Blair was fairly sure something else had worked its way into the fabric. He certainly hoped that something was legal. You could never tell with Naomi. She’d been all hepped up on hemp a few years back and knew Woody Harrelson better than Blair wanted to know about.

He sat quietly beside his mother, silent except for the rhythmic whisper of controlled breathing, barely discernable over the discordant symphony of sound that filled the evening air. Sirens screamed urgently, cries and shouts— mostly profanity— leeched up from the street and other dwellings. A garbage truck in the alley below hooked a massive dumpster with its beetle horns and fed its back end with refuse. It emitted a disharmony of airbrake shrieks, warning back-up beeps, and the noisy signs of pressurized air from the hydraulic arms. For its finale, the garbage truck crescendoed with a great bang of metal on metal and tumbling garbage.

The cacophony around them accepted, internalized and dismissed, the pair meditated on, each in a personal nirvana.

A cordless phone rested on a dented chair not far from Blair. It rarely rang, but it did so now, shrill and demanding, not unlike his mother.

“Don’t answer it, sweetie! They’ll only want you to do something dangerous. Do not answer it!” She’d certainly surfaced quickly enough this time.

Blair too surfaced immediately, although his trance had been deep and calming. It had been a welcome experience after the day’s scare with the deadly CARE package. “Shit, shit, shit! What time is it?” He fumbled for phone “Sandburg, here.” A pause. “I’ll be downstairs in 10 minutes.” He pressed the disconnect button.

Avoiding his mother’s eyes, Blair rocked himself out of the lotus position, legs only a little tingly. “I’ve got to go into the office.”

“No. I’m sorry, but no. It’s high time we talked about this. I’ve been meaning to do so since you started working for The Man, but I thought it was just a phase. A hippie child’s rebellion.”

“It’s not a phase. And it’s not a rebellion. That was organized sports, remember?” He smiled encouragingly. “It’s also not an option, Naomi. Mom. I swore an oath. I’ve got to go.”

She grabbed his arm, holding on with both hands. “Sweetie…” her voice soft, pleading. “I didn’t spend a lifetime giving you life, raising you, only to have you…” Apparently she either didn’t know or couldn’t give voice to the terrors of the job description of a bio-chemicals expert with the FBI.

Sometimes Blair wished he’d lied to her about his job. Welfare worker, retail clerk, teacher…

“I can’t…” Blair started out harshly, planning on taking a hard line with his mother. But seeing the look on her face, he began again, more softly this time. He understood where she was coming from. No one knew her like her only child.

“Mom. I cannot deal with this right now. We’ll talk about career choices and ways to change the system from within when I get back.” Yup. He knew all her buttons. “You’ll be here, right?”

She turned away from him. He pulled her back. Hugging her tightly, totally focused on her needs… except for that part of him that was calculating: five minutes to change and grab his chem kit, two minutes for the elevator…

“I love you. I’m glad to see you. I didn’t plan on this, that’s all.” And indeed, Blair thought, how could he plan on anything with her if she kept just showing up and expecting him to drop everything— including his career— to hang out with her? Still… she was Naomi. “Tell you what. When I get back we’ll do a retreat with Brother Marcus, up in the mountains. How’s that?”

“Really?” She smiled thinly, bravely, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Really?” she asked again.

“Sure. Sure. It’s probably just a training exercise. Make yourself at home.” She always did. “I’ll finish up my business and…”

He trailed off as they collected their gear and headed down the iron steps. Two minutes later he stood by the loft door, right hand on the doorknob, his always-at-the-ready knapsack of bio-chem-related emergency gear in his left.

“Blair. Sweetie.” She sniffed bravely. A single tear traversed her cheek. “Wait.”

“I’ve really got to go here, Mom.” A trace of the frustration he was trying to hide coloured his words. How many times was he going to have to explain this to her?

“I just thought that you might want to change before you go do your little exercise, dear.” Not a hint of sarcasm. She was much better at this than he was.

Before losing it altogether, he glanced down: running shoes, briefcase, dashiki. Oh. Three minutes later he started out again. This time his hair was neatly pulled back into a ponytail, the dashiki replaced by tan Dockers and a blue button-down Oxford shirt _sans_ tie. Only a minute behind schedule, the more appropriately attired Dr. Sandburg entered the waiting black sedan.

 

 

**Chapter 8. The Girl Next Door**

**Location: Seattle and Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Friday, 10:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 1:00 am**

**Time Remaining: 34 hours**

 

The two-hour notice had been more than enough time for Navy SEAL Commander Megan Connor to round up her team and prep for this meeting. She’d entered the Seattle teleconferencing room ready, willing and able to undertake whatever her superior officers had in mind. She’d never let anyone down in her entire life and she was bound and determined not to start now.

Despite her relative youth, Connor, at 36 years of age, knew she was considered one of the toughest SEALs on the force. She’d worked hard, and at this point in her career she was feared, respected and even liked by her both her commanding officers and the soldiers who comprised her team. To lead this incursion she’d have to be all that and more.

She swept straight chestnut hair back from her face with efficient movements. She was tall and slim, and had found her fashion-model looks to be both an asset and a hindrance to her career. Her black and brown belts in three different martial arts had proved purely an asset, though.

Connor was alone in the meeting room, the other participants miles away, communicating by satellite video conference. Spread out on the boardroom table before her were recently emailed aerial recon photos of Storm Island and Cascade Correctional Center.

“A precision night drop on Triple-C is out because of the full moon.”

Despite all her years in America, her Australian accent hadn’t faded much. In fact, people seemed to find it charming, and truth be told, she worked on it a bit, embellishing her conversation with Aussie-isms. She’d actually worked “dead as a dingo” into more than one conversation, along with other real and made-up expressions from “Downunder”.

Right now she dropped the affectations and concentrated on communication. “We’ve another no-go on a frontal seaside attack. At the first shot, Oliver might launch his poison rockets.”

She paused to examine something that caught her attention in a photo from the FBI office in Cascade. Brackett cut in, misinterpreting this as a conclusion to her statements.

“Well, you’ve been very clear, honey, about what can’t be done. Do you think you could perhaps suggest something a little more positive?”

She flinched slightly at “honey”, but was long used to chauvinism in the world in which she’d chosen to make her career. She glared at Brackett as best she could, both being images on a split video-conferencing screen.

“My second-in-command is working on a plan for an attack from within the prison itself.”

She waited for the buzz of conversation from the others to settle before continuing. “The idea is to penetrate the tunnels under the prison undetected, emerge at its centre and jump these desperados from behind. We’ll take their rocket positions without a shot fired!”

There, Connor bitched inwardly. That positive enough for you, you bloody talking head?

There was more hubbub from the group around the table, culminating in General Taggart’s “How do you propose to get under the prison undetected?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m going to need better intelligence than this.” She tossed the glossy eight by tens back on her table in mild disgust.

“You’ve studied the architectural plans?” Jack Kelso asked.

Connor felts sure she was really being asked if she’d done her homework. Her answer would go a long way in winning the confidence of the VIPs in Washington.

She assured the National Security Advisor that she and her team had, indeed, studied the blueprints, for what they were worth. “With all due respect, they’re pretty useless. The tunnel network that runs underneath Triple-C dates back hundreds of years. It was first hacked out of existing coastal caves….”

She rattled off the salient facts and figures she’d quickly gleaned about Storm Island, providing a useful briefing to the assemblage.

“In short, it’s the perfect place for hiding both people and cargo. It’s been ripped up and rebuilt for centuries. Under there is a maze of shit, pardon my language. If you want to save Cascade, what I need is personal, first-hand intelligence of the island’s tunnels and drainage systems.”

“Wouldn’t the former Warden or Head Administrator have that kind of knowledge?”

“Doubtful. And anyway, he died a few years back. It’s now run by Parks and Rec as a tourist attraction. Their head honcho isn’t the hands-on type, rarely even visits the facility. I think she’s running for office or something.”

“Are any of the former guards long-timers?” General Finkelman interjected.

“Those we contacted were useless. Staff usually burned out after only a few years, requesting transfers to other facilities or just getting out of the corrections business altogether.”

“Any maintenance personnel? They’d know the building even better than a guard.”

Connor ran a hand over her face. “It’s much the same story there was well. Burn out or get out. It wasn’t a very nice place. There was a janitor who worked there for 20 years, but he’s dead, too.”

“Current maintenance?” asked Finkelman.

“Parks and Rec contract maintenance out to a firm where the staff rotate to different locations. And they tend to turn over as fast as they can get better jobs.”

“Didn’t three guys escape?” Jack Kelso asked. “I believe I read an article about it.”

“That’s a local myth, sir.” Connor had really done some digging in the short time she’d been on the assignment. “No one’s escaped Triple-C and lived. A couple disappeared, but eventually turned up lodged in the tunnels or ductwork. Found ’em by smell, mostly.” The tough soldier wrinkled her nose.

“That’s excellent research, Commander Connor. But not entirely true.” All eyes turned to Wells as she cleared her throat. “Actually…” She rose from her chair. “Someone did successfully escape from Triple-C. And relatively recently, too.” Wells, paused, probably for dramatic effect. “Recent enough to still be alive.”

“Cassie! That’s enough.” Brackett’s pixellated image glared thunder at Wells. To the rest of the group he said, “The Director and I have something to discuss. In private.”

Wells gave him a black look and gathered her papers, excusing herself. Brackett and Wells rose simultaneously, one in each of the Washingtons.

Connor sat back in her chair, not certain what to make of the proceedings. Bloody Yanks.

 ~~~

Wells headed for one of the private telephones situated in small, soundproofed cubicles at one end of the foyer. At his end, Brackett grabbed the phone in the video-conferencing room and waited for Rhonda to connect the call. He didn’t wait long.

The conversation between Brackett and Wells was terse and tense, the scrambled satellite signal on the secure line unexpectedly clear for once.

“You’re not actually suggesting…” Brackett began.

“The man spent every night for six months practising dry runs of his escape. He knows every inch of that island. We have to, Lee.”

“I am _very_ uncomfortable about this.”

Wells dropped the receiver back in its cradle, handle glistening with sweat, and headed back into the meeting.

 

 

**Chapter 9. Prisoner X**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 12:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 3:30 am**

**Time Remaining: 31.5 hours**

 

The Charles Ventriss Center for Rehabilitation had been erected with much media fanfare in 1997. Designed to be the first profitable maximum-security prison in the Northwest, the spin doctors and public relations handlers had hailed it “the correctional facility for the new millennium”.

Nowhere in the press releases or media kits did it mention that it also contained certain facilities that were available for private lease for undocumented guests. A profitable venture, indeed.

Shortly after the ribbon cutting, all prisoners incarcerated at Triple-C were transferred to Ventriss Prison and the old facility turned into the present-day tourist attraction under the auspices of the Parks and Recreation Commission.

FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Sanchez waited impatiently in her car in the back parking lot of Ventriss Prison, wishing to God she still smoked. She’d allowed contingency time for heavy traffic on the freeway despite the late hour, and when it had failed to materialize, had ended up arriving at the assigned meeting place a good 15 minutes early. Ever resourceful, she pulled a glossy, internet-ready cell phone from her purse and used the time to undertake some research on the situation.

Her superior’s briefing via telephone 45 minutes ago had been succinct and, to some extent, shocking. And it was fairly difficult to shock Beverley Sanchez, arguably one of the toughest agents in the Bureau’s Cascade office.

Along with a brief overview of the situation involving Oliver’s threat to the city, she’d been given a minimum of information about the inmate she was here to pick up and transport back to headquarters. “By the way,” Brackett had added almost as an afterthought, “you’ll be doing the interrogation once we get there.” With that, he’d ended the call.

“Fine,” she’d told the dial tone. “I’ve succeeded with even less to go on than that.” But never under such dire circumstances, she’d admitted inwardly, closing the phone and preparing to leave for Ventriss.

Right at midnight, their scheduled rendezvous time, a windowless black transport van pulled into the parking lot. Brackett emerged from the passenger side. “C’mon,” he fired at Sanchez as she exited her vehicle. “We’re under the gun here. Big time.”

Five minutes later, they were striding past extensive rows of cells in the “Lazar” wing, named for Cascade’s infamous crime family. Long after visiting hours, a few stars were visible in the night sky through the barred windows located at the roofline.

Midnight had come and gone, but a few sullen inmates still hovered at their cell bars, staring at the passing agents hostilely, blankly, sadly: a grim admixture of destructive emotions and hope gone rancid. Walking quickly, the Fibbies passed in and out of each cell’s view so fast that none of the inmates had time to catcall at Sanchez… or at Brackett.

“I knew it! I knew someday this would come back to bite us on our collective ass.” Brackett gesticulated broadly, anger and fear radiating from him.

“When was the last time you saw him?” She wanted whatever information her boss would give up to her. The more info she had, the more personally tailored, and therefore more effective, her interrogation would be.

“He escaped from the Port Columbia facility. We caught him and transferred him here.”

“How’d he escape?”

“Who knows? The man was an Army Ranger. Black Ops. Trained killer.”

Sanchez raised her prettily arched eyebrows in amazement, both at the revelation and at Brackett for sharing this bit of intel with her.

“I’m surprised you caught him again, Lee.” She used his first name deliberately, playing on their close working relationship. She wasn’t the one of Bureau’s best interrogators for nothing.

“Sheer dumb luck on our part, I assure you. He has a lot of food and environmental sensitivities. He ate something that didn’t agree with him and ended up in hospital. Suspicious circumstances, fake ID, and somebody with a brain called somebody. Eventually we got him back.” He stopped before a grey iron door marked “Isolation” at the end of the gloomy corridor.

How could someone who had “food and environmental sensitivities” be a Black Ops-trained killer? His potential victims could elude him merely by wearing strong cologne or flinging shellfish at him. Well, Sanchez mused, I guess I’m about to find out. She arranged her face in her best “steely gaze” expression.

At Brackett’s order, two federal marshals unlocked the cell’s steel locking bar, pulling the heavy door toward them. The interior was claustrophobic, half-lit. A makeshift lampshade had been constructed over the room’s bare bulb from a threadbare pillowcase and a frame of interlaced plastic sporks. Sanchez instantly gathered, and approved of the fact, that no sharp or metal objects were allowed near this character. A man sat on the bed, head down, giving no impression of sanity one way or the other.

“Can we risk letting him out?” Brackett asked quietly.

Out in the hallway, a night shift janitor turned on the overheads, causing a shaft of light to illuminate the mean cell.

Even though Sanchez recognized that Brackett’s question had been rhetorical, she felt moved to respond “The question is, can we afford not to? People’s lives are at stake here.”

The shaft of light lent an nimbus to the face of James Joseph Ellison.

“He’s an American who’s been imprisoned on U.S. soil without trial for 13 years. Sure. Why wouldn’t he help us?”

 

 

**Chapter 10. Mirror Image**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 1:00 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 4:00 am**

**Time Remaining: 31 hours**

 

The FBI driver had been waiting downstairs when Blair exited his apartment promptly at 9:30. He was driven directly to the Bureau’s Cascade headquarters, which were, Blair noted (and not for the first time), located quite some distance across the compound from the Bio-Chem facility. The agent _cum_ chauffer directed him to wait in the executive lobby on the top floor.

That had been two and a half hours ago, and Blair’s enthusiasm was wearing quite thin. The experience was pretty much defining “hurry up and wait” for him.

He dozed intermittently on the black leather couch. Every now and then he popped up, determined to stay awake this time. Then he’d find himself drifting off , strains of clavichord music playing in his head.

Rising and walking around the lobby again, he wondered if he should just go home. Maybe they’d forgotten him. He could always hope.

It was the first time since his job interview that he’d been called to the main offices. And he was every bit as apprehensive now as he had been then. He was giving serious consideration to undertaking a wee bit of pacing when a junior agent appeared and escorted him to a fancy corner office. “FBI Special Agent in Charge L. Brackett” was etched into the brass nameplate beside the heavy wooden door.

Special Agent in Charge L. Brackett seemed a little surprised when Blair entered. “Dr.... Sandburg?” he asked. “Dr. _Blair_ Sandburg?”

Blair nodded and stuck out his hand.

Without introducing himself, Brackett shook, then gestured for Blair to take a seat. “I’m told you’re our best chemical weapons man, Dr. Sandburg. What’s your education?”

Okay. Another job interview. At 1:00 in the morning. Okay. He could play along. “BA in Psych. MA Anthropology. PhD biochemistry and toxicology. Rainier U,” he rattled off obediently.

“Excellent.”

It was obvious Brackett knew this already. Among his other skills Blair could read upside down, and could clearly see his resume and personnel jacket sitting open before his boss.

“What do you know about Ebola? Specifically Ebola-hybrid gas.”

Blair stared at Brackett, gauging the seriousness of the situation, the tension of the man interviewing him.

“This isn’t a training exercise, is it, sir?”

“No, Dr. Sandburg. It’s not a training exercise.”

Ebola-hybrid gas. _Ebola-hybrid gas._ He took a moment to gather his thoughts on the subject. He’d read about it in the various scientific journals he subscribed to, as well as in the FBI briefing papers. The peace-loving son of Naomi had been appalled. The research he’d been involved with as a grad student had been so incredibly different in nature that it all seemed surreal and unlikely to him.

He turned to his superior and began to run through everything he could remember about Ebola-hybrid gas.

“While attempting to find a vaccine for Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever, scientists inadvertently stumbled upon the exact opposite. Sort of like inventing the microwave when searching for new methods of refrigeration.” He hurried to get back on topic at Brackett’s impatient gesture. He was getting the impression that Brackett knew all this anyway and was just testing him. “They managed to genetically alter the virus, making it exponentially more deadly than before they’d started fucking around with it.” He hated being tested almost as much as he hated needles.

Brackett chuckled. To Blair it almost seemed as if his superior was more impressed with his use of profanity than with his knowledge of the subject. Brackett nodded for him to go on.

“The military then figured out a way to suspend it in hydrogen so it could be used in bio-chemical warfare. Dropped on _people_ , that is. So far it’s never been used, but laboratory subjects, bugs and small animals…” He shuddered at that. He was dead set against animal testing, but unfortunately, not all researchers agreed with him. “The test subjects,” he continued, “exposed to the gas died almost instantly and horribly. And it spreads like smoke. The hydrogen suspension makes it a simple airborne transmitter rather than requiring an exchange of body fluids or close proximity.” Brackett looked a bit lost. “It’ll be spread by an air conditioning system or a light breeze. Doesn’t need a kiss or a cough.”

Brackett’s face creased in an odd and rather creepy smile. At what, Blair was afraid to even speculate.

“There’re a couple of goods thing about it from a military perspective.” Blair parroted the Pentagon brief he’d read. “One is that it lives only a few hours. Which means an invading Army could bomb a location from a safe distance, killing most if not all of the inhabitants instantly. Then military personnel could safely enter the area just hours later.” _That’s a good thing?_ Blair sarcasmed inwardly. “The other good thing is that the virus can’t survive in salt water.” He was on surer ground speaking of the environmental impact. “So any that accidentally falls into the ocean becomes just plain ol’ pollution.”

Bringing it back to the area of military interest, Brackett asked, “So there’s no danger that we’d drop it on some faraway nation and wake up to find we’d poisoned America, is there?”

“Right. I mean, no. That wouldn’t happen. It kills only people and some types of monkeys. ‘No dolphins would be harmed in the annihilation of this enemy.’” A hint of contempt leeched into Blair’s commentary. “Now, the way it works is…”

Brackett cut him off, smiling warmly despite the ghastly nature of their conversation. “Thank you, Dr. Sandburg. I can see why your superiors recommended you for this mission. Follow me, please.”

Blair wondered just who had recommended him for what mission and whether he should be flattered and grateful… or not.

Brackett headed out of his office and into a meeting room at the end of the hallway, Blair in tow. Except it didn’t look like any meeting room Blair had ever seen before. It looked a lot more like an interrogation room complete with what he assumed was two-way glass. Beyond the glass sat a raggedy old man in an orange jumpsuit and leg irons, cuffed hands clasped on the table before him.

 _I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole._ For a moment, Blair worried he’d spoken out loud. He tried to act cool. After all, he’d been requesting fieldwork for some time. Now was his big chance. If only he had a clue…

Brackett took a moment to introduce Blair to the other person in the room, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Beverley Sanchez. She was striking and self-possessed. She seemed pleased to meet him for about a half second, before turning her attention back to the window.

The two men joined her at the table in front of the glass. Blair stared at the scruffy man in the next room. Blair wondered what on earth this convict had to do with his own bio-chem specialty, then shuddered visibly when his mind supplied a whole raft of possibilities.

“What you’re about to see and hear is a matter of the highest national security.”

Brackett immediately had Blair’s full attention.

“Disclose all or any of it to any party not currently in this room or otherwise cleared by me and you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” Brackett paused meaningfully. “Do you understand that, Dr. Sandburg?”

Blair swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir,” he finally answered when it appeared Brackett wanted a verbal commitment.

“Sanchez?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Her eyes hadn’t left the prisoner. “Tell no one anything. Got it. Got it.” She obviously felt a lot more comfortable with the situation than Blair did. Or perhaps it was bravado. Blair returned his attention to Brackett.

“First, I want to impress upon you both that I wouldn’t be telling you word one of this if it wasn’t a desperate situation.” Again he paused. Irreverently, Blair wondered if Brackett had studied drama in college. “The man you’re observing is James Joseph Ellison, an American who has been incarcerated in various national penal institutions for the past 13 years. Most of it in solitary confinement.”

 _Thirteen years!_ Blair thought. This Ellison character must have been some bad motherfucker!

“Five years ago,” Brackett continued, “just before the facility was closed, he successfully escaped from the Cascade Correctional Center.”

“But Sir, no one’s ever escaped from Triple-C,” Blair interrupted. “No. See, I took the tour…”

“I’m telling you facts, Sandburg. Do not argue and do not question. Ellison is the only successful escapee in the history of the prison. He was recaptured after a short period and sent to the prison at Port Columbia. Two years later he escaped from there, too.”

Blair raised his eyebrows.

“He was caught again at the Canadian border and he’s been held here at Ventriss ever since.”

Blair shifted in his seat, brows knitted sceptically.

“The reason, Dr. Sandburg, that you’ve never heard about it is that prison breaks are confidential. Strictly ‘need to know’. It’s important for the American people to feel safe at night. That one or two criminals escape from prison now and then is not a fact the general public really wants to know.”

Sanchez gave a confirming nod.

Sandburg just stared from Brackett to Sanchez in disbelief. All his life he’d heard dire stories of corrupt institutions from his mother and her activist friends. This, however, was the first time he’d ever had official confirmation! And now he was in on it. He felt a little shaky. It was one thing to be “working for The Man”, quite another to find he’d become “The Man”.

Brackett gestured toward the glass. “He’s here now because we need something from him. We need to know how he escaped Triple-C. Specifically, the route he took through Storm Island’s system of underground caves and tunnels.”

“You want him conscious or unconscious afterward?” Special Agent Sanchez postured, folding her arms across her chest.

“Don’t even entertain it, Beverly.”

She’s the FBI’s heavy on this, Blair realized: a pretty woman with a pretty first name, and all the subtlety of a heart attack.

“This man laughs at strong-arm tactics. Sodium pentathol or any of our more sophisticated drugs don’t work either.”

Speaking before thinking, Blair asked, “So why would he want to help us now?”

“Because I’m willing to give him what he wants, Sandburg: freedom. He won’t have to spend the rest of his miserable life defending his virtue in the shower.”

Blair stared at the prisoner again. Ellison. He was slumped over in his seat, head almost on his chest. Blair wasn’t sure anyone in the shower would _want_ his virtue, but the way the garish jumpsuit pulled across broad shoulders and back suggested the guy was in better shape than Blair had originally thought.. Maybe the guy was in better shape than Blair had originally thought.

Brackett picked up an official-looking document that had been lying on the table before him. “This is a Presidential pardon. The Justice Department has made all the necessary arrangements.”

He extended the pardon to Sanchez.

“That’s a helluva steep price to pay for a small amount of information. I don’t need that to get you what you want.” Still, she uncrossed one arm and reached for it.

“We’re going to try subtlety first. Then, if he doesn’t cooperate, maybe we’ll let you try it your way. A coerced man is likely to give less-than-reliable information.”

“Subtlety’s my middle name.” She rose gracefully, towered aggressively over the still-seated Blair. “Watch, kid. Maybe you’ll learn something.” She neglected to take the pardon with her.

She exited the observation room, closing the door softly behind her. Oddly, she failed to appear on the other side of the mirror as expected.

Staring at the menacing and none-too-clean character on the other side of the glass, Blair muttered aloud, “‘a bentback mudman monster’.”

In the room, Ellison’s lowered head jerked slightly.

“What’s that, Sandburg?” Brackett asked, distractedly, gaze not leaving the window.

“Nothing, sir. Just some Kerouac. From ‘Big Sur’. The, um, novel.” He trailed off, having lost Brackett’s interest.

In the interrogation room, Ellison raised his head for the first time and looked around. He shook long, stringy hair from his eyes and focused on the mirror. He was much younger than Blair had originally thought.

Then Ellison grinned at him. _At him!_ Staring right through the mirror as if it wasn’t there.

 _“Aka!”_ Blair swore in the comfortingly harsh glottals of Quechua, the South American tribal language he spoke fluently. “It’s as if he can see me. He’s looking right at me.”

Ellison gave a tiny nod. Blair shuddered, fascinated and unnerved at the same time.

Brackett swivelled his head in Blair’s direction, giving him a smile that might have been meant to reassure or to intimidate— or both.

“These rooms are state of the art. He can’t see or hear us at all. That’s why we have the intercom system.” He pressed one button on a bank of several.

The wall-mounted intercom emitted a high-pitched whine of feedback. It must have done so on both sides of the mirror, because Ellison suddenly clapped his hands over his ears as if in pain.

Brackett released the button, looking thoughtful. Ellison slowly lowered his hands.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Blair exclaimed.

And they did while they waited for Sanchez to put in an appearance on the other side of the glass. Five minutes passed, then 10. “Probably hiding in the bathroom,” Brackett muttered. “She’d better get her ass out here pretty damn quick.”

They’d more than defined “uncomfortable silence” by the time Sanchez finally entered the interrogation room carrying a single cup of coffee. Ellison, who’d returned to his former slump, sniffed the air but didn’t look up.

In fact, Ellison just sat there, eyes forward again, totally engrossed in the banged-up table top, as if he could see the very molecules that made up the scarred metal surface.

Sanchez grabbed a chair and turned it around so its back was to the table. She seated herself on it backwards, legs spread wide to accommodate the seat, arms crossed on the back just under her chin. It was an aggressive pose for a man, flagrantly so for a woman. Ellison continued to stare at the table for a few more long moments.

“I’m FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Sanchez.” Her voice was forceful. When he didn’t respond, she snapped her fingers in his face. Not so much as a flinch of an eyebrow.

Still getting no response, she shrugged and turned her chair around, seating herself on it in a more “ladylike” manner. The whole thing had an orchestrated feel to it. She sat back in the chair, sipping her coffee, looking at ease and fully prepared to wait him out.

Finally he spoke.

“Pardon me for not rising or shaking your hand.” He moved around a bit so his leg irons clanked and rattled like Jacob Marley’s. “So you’re in charge, hmmm? In charge of what?” he asked pleasantly. “Fucking me over for another 13 years?”

She laughed a little, maybe nervous, maybe not. With her, Blair thought, it was hard to tell. She continued the conversation in the genial tone he’d initiated. “Hey. Easy. I just want to talk. I’m not the one who locked you away, remember.” She held up her hands, palms out—a gesture both submissive and defensive at the same time. “Don’t blame me.”

“Not you in particular, no. But I do recall a number of special agents just like you. CIA. FBI. CSIS. There were quite a lot of them, actually.” His pale blue eyes were chilling, belying his warm smile and manner.

“I understand you have—”

“You know what FBI stands for, Ms. Sanchez?” he cut in. “Fucking Bumbling Idiots.” He turned in his chair so she faced his profile. “You know what?” He paused, but just as she was about to respond, he cut her off again. “I just decided I don’t want to talk to you. You military-wannabe types play too many games. And you, Ms. Sanchez, are particularly transparent.”

A pause. Sanchez glared at Ellison’s head, but he turned further from her.

“We just have a few questions for you, Mr. Ellison.”

She waited.

He waited.

Eventually she sighed and added, “Questions about the Cascade Correctional Center. You remember Triple-C, don’t you? Did you know it’s a tourist attraction now? German families passing through. Japanese businessmen with cameras. All ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the place you once called home. Did you know you can buy snacks in the old gatehouse? And souvenirs of little, tiny Jimmy Ellisons in black-and-white-striped outfits. Very realistic.” She reached across the table and plucked at his day-glo jumpsuit.

He moved away from her. Either she’d managed to get a rise out of him, or he felt he’d won this battle by getting her to speak first. “Do I remember Triple-C? I was locked up there for most of the last decade! No. _Duh._ Never heard of it.” Maybe he just welcomed the chance to be rude back to her.

“Not the island itself,” she said thinly. “I mean the tunnels underneath it.”

Out in the observation room, Brackett muttered, “Real subtle, Sanchez…” No doubt he also volunteered advice to coaches and players when watching sports on TV.

“There’s no harm in cooperating with us, now is there, Mr. Ellison? Jim.”

“Who’s ‘us’? Why would I want to do that? And ‘Mr. Ellison’ is fine, thank you.”

“Maybe there’s something in it for you.” He shifted his chair back a bit to look at her. “A full Presidential pardon, perhaps?”

Ignoring Sanchez and abandoning English, Ellison addressed his next comment to the mirror.

“What’s he saying?” Brackett demanded. “I don’t recognize the language.”

Blair smiled a little. “What a coincidence. It’s the language I swore in earlier.” Blair looked quickly at Brackett. “You’re sure he can’t hear us in here? Their side of the intercom’s not turned on, right?”

Brackett looked exasperated. “No. He can’t hear or see us.” He checked the dials anyway. “Now what the fuck did he say?”

In the other room, Ellison had paused, almost as if he was waiting for Blair to translate.

“Well, it’s Quechua all right, but… weird. It’s a variation on a quote from Virgil: ‘I fear Greeks even when they bear gifts’.”

Ellison spoke again. “Do you read, Sanchez?”

The non sequitur may have puzzled Sanchez, but she appeared to be playing along. “Yes. I can read. Most of us special agents can, nowadays.” She gave him a superior grin.

“The story of Alchimadus. Know it?”

“No.” The grin looked more forced now. “Why don’t you tell me? We’ve got all the time in the world.”

On the other side of the glass Brackett hissed at Sandburg, “Do you?”

“Uh, yeah. Ancient Greece. Alchimadus was imprisoned by his king, although he’d done nothing wrong.”

Next Ellison asked, “Thomas à Becket. Heard of him?”

“Maybe. Umm. High school, I think. What about him?”

Without being asked, Blair informed Brackett: “Thomas à Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Imprisoned and executed by Henry the Second. Later found to be innocent.”

“Solzhenitsyn. I’ve a sneaking suspicion you’ve heard of him.” Ellison’s tone was patronizing. Sanchez didn’t bother to answer.

“Russian poet and dissident exiled to Siberia,” Blair filled in.

“I know who Solzhenitsyn is!” Brackett snapped, not mentioning the fact that he hadn’t known the previous references.

“Look.” Sanchez leaned forward menacingly. “I’m asking the fucking questions here. You can trust the FBI.”

“That’s a good one, Sanchez.” Ellison barked out a harsh, mirthless laugh. “What do you call an FBI agent who can’t tell a lie?”

Sanchez declined to respond.

“A mute.”

Ellison turned away as if Sanchez no longer existed. They sat like that for some minutes. Sanchez appeared to be checking her manicure. Ellison stared at the wall now, instead of the table.

Again, Ellison nearly crumbled in his seat when the intercom crackled into life.

“Uh, Agent Sanchez? Could we have a word with you?” Brackett released the intercom button.

Sanchez headed to the door, but at the last second turned around and tossed a coin at Ellison. With surprising accuracy, considering the cuffs, he plucked the coin from the air. Opening his hand, Blair could see a quarter lying across his palm. Ellison looked at her inquiringly.

“Call your lawyer and tell him you’re going back to jail.” She placed one hand on the doorknob then stopped a second time, her back to Ellison. She canted her slim hips to one side and wiggled her derriere at him. “Take a good look, Ellison. Bet I’m the first woman you’ve seen in a looooong time.” She cooed over her shoulder at him without turning. “And thanks to your extraordinary levels of cooperation, probably the last!” She slammed out the door.

Ellison looked startlingly unmoved by her display of pique.

 ~~~

“Impressive, Sanchez,” Brackett commented dryly as she re-entered the observation room. “Didn’t take him much to get the better of you.”

“That’s just an act.” She sipped her coffee, completely unruffled. “We’ve made him an offer he can’t refuse. Now we just have to let him stew about it. Next time I go in he’ll—”

“I do wish,” Brackett said through clenched teeth, “that you had cleared that strategy with me beforehand. We don’t really have time for ‘stewing’.”

“Well, surely you didn’t think he was just going to ’fess up right off the bat.” She looked appalled at the very notion. “Even strong-arm tactics take hours. I’m sure he’ll be ready to cave in…” She looked at her watch, then back at Ellison who’d turned to stare at the table again. “…45 minutes. Tops.”

Brackett gusted out a huge puff of air. “So, we’ll wait. In the meantime, just to kill time, of course, why don’t you see what you can get out of him, Sandburg?” Brackett inclined his head toward the two-way glass.

“Wha..? Me? What?” Surprised couldn’t begin to describe Blair’s emotional state. “I’m just the subject matter expert here. I’m no interrogator.”

“Ellison’ll eat him alive.” Sanchez sniffed. “This should be good.” She seated herself, feet up on the table, arms across her chest again, settling in to enjoy the show.

“What have we got to lose?” Brackett snapped in her direction, as if Blair wasn’t in the room. Thanks for the faint praise, boss, Blair thought, although he was inclined to agree.

Even looking at it that way, Blair still didn’t think it was a good idea and said so, pointing out that they could actually offend Ellison further. “Why don’t you try?” Blair suggested helpfully to Brackett.

“Me? Er. Um. I need to remain behind the scenes. Pulling the strings but never seen.” Brackett appeared nervous suddenly, as he hadn’t about anything else thus far in their encounter.

“‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’ That it?” Blair wasn’t sure Brackett would get this reference either.

If Brackett had been about to let Sandburg off the hook, that last crack must have changed his mind again. “Get going, Sandburg. Your original areas of study were anthropology and psych, right? Go play head games with the master.”

And speaking of head games, Blair recalled Brackett’s first words to him when he’d asked about his education, even though he’d had Blair’s file in front of him. Now it looked like Brackett had _memorized_ Blair’s file. Maybe Ellison was right about the FBI, but then Blair himself was FBI and he was trustworthy. Or had been up till now.

“Besides.” Brackett handed the pardon to Blair, smirking at him. “Ellison’s already had Sanchez for the first course. Now he needs dessert.”

“Yeah,” laughed Sanchez. “Hey, Sandburg. Tell him we’re using him to train junior agents in what _not_ to do when interrogating prisoners. Maybe he’ll sign the damn pardon just to end this parade of _ooooo_ scary interrogators.” She produced a nail file from nowhere and began to smooth out a rough spot on her middle finger.

Smarting from her mockery, Blair made something of a show of considering his new role. He stared at the document that could change a man’s life, stared at Brackett, then stared at the pardon again. It seemed to take forever, but couldn’t have, because Brackett wasn’t rushing him, just extending the document a bit further. In utter disbelief, Blair reached for the pardon, mentally dredging up everything he’d ever read or heard about interrogation and negotiation techniques. He recalled bits and pieces about information extraction from neuro-linguistic programming to Stockholm syndrome to that advertising course he’d taken for an easy credit one year.

Rising a bit shakily, he headed directly from the observation room to the interrogation room, not stopping for coffee like Sanchez had. It was obvious that had been pure showmanship on her part, playing her strengths against Brackett’s as well as playing domination games with Ellison.

But coffee, man… he sure could use a cup. Or something even stronger, like that eucalyptus bark and mint tea he’d… he snapped his wandering mind back to the task at hand.

He entered the room timidly, knowing he was completely out of his element, convinced that everyone would instantly figure out he had no idea what he was doing. Then he was suddenly face to face with this… Ellison creature.

The two men regarded each other. Blair made and held eye contact in a neutral and curious way, not at all aggressive, as Sanchez had been.

Without taking his eyes from Ellison’s, Blair ordered toward the mirror, “Remove the handcuffs.” As an afterthought, he added “please”. There must have bee n too much leftover testosterone in the air or something. He took a deep, centering breath and continued his overtures with Ellison, Blair trying for warm and sincere, Ellison inscrutable.

After a few long moments, the door of the interrogation room creaked open and Beverly Sanchez entered again, this time without making any eye contact at all. From the corner of his eye, Blair watched her fiddle with a large metal key ring. Softly, she asked Blair if he was quite sure. Blair was surprised that her tone was empty of sarcasm and mostly filled with concern, although for his safety or what, he couldn’t tell. It was enough to make Ellison’s gaze flicker to her for a moment, then he watched as she uncuffed first one wrist, then the other. The leg irons she left in place and Blair chose not to push it. He, too, was just a little worried about his own safety.

As she turned to leave, her immediate assignment complete, Blair called to her gently, “Beverly.”

She froze with one hand on the door.

“Do you think you could ask someone to get us a couple of cups of coffee?” Her knuckles on the doorknob went white. “As you well know,” Blair grinned so she could hear the smile in his voice, even though she wasn’t looking in their direction, “interrogation is thirsty work.” Audaciously, he winked at Ellison. “No matter who’s interrogating whom.”

Beverly nodded, exited the room without looking or speaking to them. Only time would tell if she would look after his request for coffee.

Blair waited, prepared to sit for a while, but almost immediately, Ellison snarled, “Who the fuck are you, Mother Theresa?”

“Nah, although the resemblance was striking.” Not exactly “thank you”, but a conversational opening, nonetheless.

Ellison looked surprised. Maybe no one had joked with him in years.

“Actually, I’m Dr. Sandburg. Blair. And…” He pulled up a chair and sat facing Ellison across a corner of the table, his quaking knees almost touching Ellison’s. “Mr. Ellison, we really need your help.”

Ellison looked impassive so Blair continued. “Here’s a pardon and a…” he quickly perused the papers he’d been handed. “A release contract from the Attorney General’s office. It makes you a free man…” He let Ellison think about that for a moment. “Providing you cooperate.”

Blair slid a ballpoint pen across to Ellison like an experienced salesman. Ellison looked at the pen, then Blair.

“What do you do for the FBI, ‘Dr. Sandburg. Blair’?” The pleasant tone of inquiry did little to hide the underlying sarcasm.

“I’m a field agent.” Blair lied smoothly. So much for honest FBI agents.

Ellison leaned forward, newly freed hands clasped between his knees. “You’re lying. I can smell it on you.”

Blair sat back stiffly. Something about Ellison’s comment nagged at the back of his mind. Smell a lie on a person? Where had he heard something like that before? He refocused his wayward thoughts as Ellison continued.

“Now tell me what you really do,” he whispered, peering into Blair’s eyes as if he could see a lie as well as smell it. Ellison glanced at the mirror for a split second, as if something or someone on the other side of the mirror had distracted him, then brought his intense gaze back to Blair.

“I’m a chemical weapons expert.”

Ellison nodded once, staring at Blair thoughtfully, rather than aggressively. Then he grinned.

Blair wondered what there was about being a bio-chem that Ellison found entertaining.

Taking up the papers on the table, Ellison began to peruse them. Before he reached the end of the first page, the junior agent who had originally fetched Blair to headquarters entered the interrogation room, nervously bearing a tray of coffee, cream, sugar, two plastic spoons. The cups were Styrofoam. There were even a couple of vending machine doughnuts, still in their pre-sealed plastic wrap. No doubt the best they could scrounge at…Blair glanced at his watch…2:00 in the morning.

The tray clattered a bit as the agent plunked it on the table and exited as quickly as he could, not taking his eyes off Ellison.

Ellison only smiled, then wordlessly sniffed the coffee and other items on the tray. He carefully added sugar and cream to one of the cups, gesturing for Blair to take the other. The role of host seemed to switch back and forth between them. It brought a sense of balance that Blair found rather equalizing.

Ellison then read the pardon contract thoroughly, occasionally referring back to earlier pages. Blair noted that Ellison managed the fine print without moving the paper any closer.

Finally he spoke. “You said I’d be a free man, Sandfield.”

“That’s right, sir. And it’s ‘Sandburg’, by the way. But call me Blair.”

“Define ‘free’, Sandburg.”

“Uhhh, well. Emancipated. Unfettered.”

“I know what the fucking word means, dumb-ass. I meant in this context.”

“I don’t understand…” Ellison sniffed in his direction; if he could smell lies as he claimed, wouldn’t he be able to smell the truth, too?

“During the time I cooperate, will I be outside? Outside a jail?” He spoke slowly, as if talking to a complete idiot.

Unlike Sanchez, Blair felt no compunction toward anger or manipulative techniques. They were asking a great deal from this man, and he had a right to expect to be dealing with someone who knew what he was doing. Blair bluffed as best he could. “Well. Yes. I suppose…”

“You suppose?”

“Yes. You’ll be outside.” He glanced at the mirror. Maybe he should have picked up the phone between the rooms or popped back into the observation room to confer with Brackett. What if he was making promises he couldn’t keep?

As if the freedom issue was settled, Ellison jumped down a new path of questioning. “What’s happening on Storm Island, Sandburg?”

Blair was well aware who exactly was interrogating whom here. Still, it appeared to be working, and much better than Sanchez’ aggressive stance. He looked straight into the other man’s eyes. He had nothing to hide and some information he was sure of, although not enough to truly slip up. He felt fairly safe with this line of questioning. “A matter of life and death.”

Ellison considered this for a moment, then picked up the pen. He toyed with it a moment, hefting it, unscrewing and re-screwing the top, almost as if evaluating its usefulness as a weapon.

Blair fidgeted in his hard wooden chair. He’d read about prison fights in which a pen was used to stab another inmate or guard. Ellison stopped toying with the pen and looked directly at the two-way mirror. Of course Ellison must be aware that Blair’s superiors were watching. No doubt he’d recognized Blair’s junior status and was addressing his comments to the bosses on the other side of the glass. He couldn’t have any idea, of course, who specifically was observing them.

“I’ll tell you what, Chief. I’ll give you the information you need on one condition.” Blair nodded. “A minimum of two hours in the Cascade Arms Hotel. It does still exist, doesn’t it?”

Not waiting for an answer, he addressed the mirror again. “I want a shower and some new clothes. Blue jeans. Levis. And a black t-shirt and a nice, soft flannel shirt. They need to be washed first, in hypoallergenic detergent. The prison can tell you which ones I don’t have a reaction to.” He yanked at the neck of his orange jumpsuit, revealing a ring of partially healed sores. “I have sensitivities,” he commented wryly.

He paused a moment, appearing to take mental inventory. Thirteen years was a long time not to have to think about your wardrobe. “Plus a jacket.”

Blair smiled. This seemed like a very reasonable and very human request. “I think we can arrange something.”

With that, Ellison picked up the pen and signed the pardon contract. He handed it to Blair.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Ellison.” Blair almost bowed as he turned to leave. There was something about Ellison’s commanding presence, even in the rough shape he was in. “You should have your freedom back very shortly.”

Ellison mumbled something. Blair almost thought he’d heard “I’ll hold my breath.” In Quechua.

Blair felt both triumphant and apprehensive as he re-entered the observation room. After all, he’d succeeded where the so-called expert had failed. Sanchez wasn’t going to like that much, so he wasn’t entirely surprised when she snarled at him immediately. “Why didn’t you throw in a trip to Bali while you were at it?” Sarcasm did not become her. Still, he could understand her resentment. She was supposed to be the best in the business, and he, a science nerd and not even a field agent, had succeeded where she’d failed. And in front of her boss, yet.

Awkwardly, Blair gestured with the pardon, “I guess you’ll have this sent to the President now. Right, sir?” It was a little dizzying to think he’d been part of a negotiation that would come to the attention of the President.

“Give it to me.” Something about Brackett’s tone and manner made Blair hesitate. Maybe he could smell a lie on someone, too. “Give it to me, Sandburg.”

Blair reluctantly handed over the pardon.

Seizing the document from Blair’s outstretched hand, Brackett promptly tore it in half. He turned and began feeding the torn pages into a waiting mini-shredder perched on the edge of a wastebasket. Blair didn’t think it had been there when he left.

“Sir? That’s a legal document.” He had to try. For clarification. For Ellison.

In the other room, Ellison started singing, _“Gotta black magic woman.”_ Loudly and badly.

“I’ll decide what’s…” Brackett reached across the table and flicked off the room-to-room intercom. Ellison’s lips continued to move, but not a single off-key note leaked through. Brackett began again. “I’ll decide what’s legal, Sandburg. And what’s not. And this…” He fed the next few torn pages into the shredder, the sliced ribbons trickling into the wastebasket like a paper waterfall. “Well, it certainly isn’t legal now, is it, Sandburg?”

Over Brackett’s shoulder, Blair noticed movement in the interrogation room. Ellison stood up, and glanced at the mirror. He then leaned down and placed on the floor the quarter Sanchez had flung at him earlier. He raised his metal chair, slammed it down hard on the coin.

Sanchez and Brackett were occupied with unjamming the shredder. It whined harshly as it tried dutifully to digest the bulk and the staples Brackett had fed into its maw.

“Sir?” Blair tried again for an explanation. He felt used and dishonest. He’d given the man in the next room his word in good faith. It was like Brackett was betraying not just James Ellison, but Blair Sandburg as well. “Those references to Alchimadus, Beckett, Solzhenitsyn all had something in common.”

Brackett ignored him. It was like he hadn’t spoken at all. Like he wasn’t even there.

In the interrogation room, Ellison stooped to pick up the quarter. He moved toward the mirror and began carving into the glass with its roughened and damaged edge. The room must have featured the very best in soundproofing, since Blair couldn’t hear even the faintest shriek of metal on glass.

Only Blair noticed Ellison’s activities. He asked himself why he wasn’t saying something. Instead, he moved to the other side, drawing his colleague’s attention away from the mirror. He almost lost it when Ellison appeared to wink at him. It must just be a tic or something. It was one-way glass only. He’d tried to look through it himself when he’d been on Ellison’s side.

“Sir? Special Agent Brackett?”

Having finally gotten the shredder working again, Brackett fed the last pages into the purring machine. At last he straightened up impatiently and faced Sandburg, back still to the glass. Blair seized the moment to plead, “Those men Ellison referenced were all imprisoned for doing nothing wrong. It’s too much of a coincidence. Why did Ellison pick those historic references in particular?” He gathered his courage and demanded, “What’s going on, sir?” all the while continuing to watch Ellison over Brackett’s shoulder.

“You’re out of your depth here, Sandburg. Stay in the shallow end where you belong, like a good kid.” Brackett had dropped the “nice guy” front now. “You’re on a ‘need-to-know’ basis and _you do not need to know about this!”_ He practically shouted the last part.

Ellison had carefully etched a more-or-less circular ring in the mirror. He stepped back to the table and grabbed the heavy serving tray that had held the coffee, quickly dumping its contents. He re-approached the window and slammed the tray against it. Having been weakened by the etching with the marred quarter, the glass exploded out from the interrogation room, crashing onto the table on the observation side. Blair’s side.

Brackett and Sanchez whirled around as Ellison leaned into the observation room, unhurried, casually looking around, taking in the occupants and their surroundings.

“Oh, Blair,” Ellison called in a much-too-pleasant tone. “I thought of something else I’d like, since you’re offering. A shave and a haircut, please.” He ran his fingers through his stringy locks. They stuck on snarls and knots partway though. “As you can see, I need it in the worst way.”

He smiled warmly at Blair, then moved his gaze to the room’s other occupants, who stood frozen, Brackett’s finger depressing a red emergency call button. “Nice to see you again so soon, Ms. Sanchez. Hello, Brackett. It’s no surprise you’re the man behind the mirror.” He rapped on the compromised glass just as two agents on security detail burst into his side of the room. Blair watched as they re-cuffed Ellison none too gently and dragged him from the room.

To where, Blair wondered. Did they have cells here, too?

 

 

**Chapter 11. Sweet Science**

**Location: Edwards Air Force Base, Mojave, California** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 7:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 10:30 am**

**Time Remaining: 24.5 hours**

 

The Mojave Desert flats are vast vistas of burning, baking dirt, nowhere near anything or anyone. It’s the perfect place for the military to test… things. This morning, a rusty old Chevy Corvair rested under a tripod. Suspended from the tripod was a blinking electronic device.

Situated nearby was a bunker layered with heat-reflective metal sheeting. It served as shelter for the observers: a few scientists and technicians, and, of course, some military personnel, USAF General Finkelman among them.

On the General’s say-so (having received the go-ahead from the scientists), the device was detonated. White-hot smoking liquid showered down on the old rustbucket. In a matter of seconds, the car melted into a pool of molten steel, then burned even further until nothing more than a pile of ash remained.

A desert wind circled the heap, taking possession of the powder and sucking it out into the dunes where it formed a harmless whirlwind. A tribute to absolute mortality. Ashes to ashes. Rust to dust.

After waiting a bit for the area to cool down from surface-of-the-sun to mere inferno, USAF personnel Captain Mitch Reeves and Lieutenant Debra Reeves headed out into the heat waves in heat-reflective suits designed by Reeves, Senior himself. As the scientists observed and analyzed from the safety of the bunker, Reeves _père et fille_ inspected the remains. Or lack thereof. They took a wealth of measurements and readings of their own.

Inspection complete, they walked back to the bunker, the heat-reflective metal fronting also of Mitch Reeve’s design. This father-and-daughter team of military firefighters was a real asset to their assignment.

The Reeves entered the bunker, pulling off their suit hoods, faces beet red and sweaty from the heat. Debra clawed at the tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail and glued themselves to her sweaty cheek and jaw.

“I hope we’ve demonstrated willy peter to your satisfaction, ma’am. As you can see, it burns steel. And it burns titanium. It’ll sure as hell burn up your poison and everything else in the atmosphere.”

“Yes, thank you. You most certainly have.” Sarah Finkelman smoothed back her own hair in unconscious sympathy. “I need four F-16s equipped with air-to-ground missiles within…” She consulted her Bulgari wristwatch. “Twenty-six hours.”

“Twenty-six… With all due respect, General…” Mitch Reeves snorted, not sounding duly respectful at all. “Let me list some things that are more possible. Like say, winning the lottery… twice. Climbing Mount Everest barefoot. Getting a parking space at Yankee Stadium. Marrying Britney Spears…”

Debra chimed in. “What my father’s trying to say, General Finkelman, is that we just can’t do it. We don’t have the specialized personnel or the equipment to do it up right.”

“You can. And you will.” Finkelman didn’t get to be general by taking no for an answer. “The additional technicians, along with pre-assembled materials, will be here in…” She checked her watch again. “About an hour.” She saluted smartly and left the bunker, heading for her transport.

 

 

**Chapter 12. Inside Man**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 9:00 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 12:00 noon**

**Time Remaining: 23 hours**

 

FBI Field Agent (Acting) Blair Sandburg sat uncomfortably and self-consciously in the rear of the FBI van. Built-in benches ran down either side of the van’s interior, their cushionless seats offering little in the way of comfort or stability. He slipped and swayed slightly each time the vehicle rounded a corner.

The van had been customized for prisoner transport. Everything was constructed of metal and bolted down. As far as Blair could see, there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. The metal rings on the floor, walls, and benches were a nice touch, he thought grimly.

Ellison was seated on the bench across from Blair. His ankles were shackled to a steel loop in the floor between them.

The windowless interior of the van was gloomy, despite the clear morning sky. The occupants looked eerie and ghoulish in the shadowy half-light shed by the single overhead dome bulb.

The two FBI agents serving as escort talked quietly, heads together, voices hushed. They seemed almost oblivious to their captive and their surroundings. They’d been introduced to Blair as Agents Ray Aldo and Tommy Wu. They seemed okay. Like field agents, he guessed. He hadn’t met very many.

Jim Ellison, however, seemed interested in everything going on around him. He peered into every dark corner, cocked his head like a listening bird. Hell, he even seemed to be sniffing. Must be a real smorgasbord to the senses after so long in solitary confinement.

Blair was awkwardly trying not to let Ellison catch his eye. He worried that Ellison would try and take advantage of their previous contact, and that would look odd to his fellow FBI agents. Blair felt a peculiar kinship with Ellison, which he blamed on his early training at his mother’s knee. She’d always taught him to cheer for the underdog and distrust “The Man”. Even though he now earned his living being “The Man” himself.

 _“Trying to change the system from within.”_ Leonard Cohen’s lyrics formed a credo of sorts for Blair, although Cohen had hardly been the first to coin that ’60s phrase. In fact, hadn’t it been—

Blair’s ringing cell phone startled him back to the present.

“Hi, sweetie. How’re things?” Speak of the devil, Blair thought wryly.

“Er… Fine. I’m kinda busy right now.”

“But, Blair, I need to talk to you. I’m having some very bad vibes about this FBI stuff you do. I mean, the next thing I know you’re going to be parading around here in an olive drab uniform and jackboots.”

“Listen, Naomi. Firstly, the FBI doesn’t require its agents to wear uniforms, unless you call the _Men In Black_ suits a uniform.” He eyed his compatriots warily, hoping he hadn’t insulted them. Both looked at him dully. Aldo was dressed in a charcoal suit with chalk-stripes. Wu wore trendy black jeans with a sharp black sport coat, no doubt by some famous designer or another.

“And secondly,” he continued, “I can’t talk right now. I’ll explain later, but you need to get out of Cascade. Right now. I repeat. Get out of Cascade. Go visit your sister in Vancouver. Go see cousin Ira in Boca. Go stay in a yurt in Outer Mongolia. Again. Whatever. Just. Get. Out. Now.”

“So now you’re giving me orders. Well, ‘hell no, I won’t go!’” Trust Naomi to have a hippie protest chant at the ready.

“Naomi. I’m—”

The dial tone signalled the unilateral conclusion to the phone call. Blair slumped in his seat, sighing heavily, suddenly not concerned with what his fellow passengers thought. Besides, he’d had a lifetime of being taught not to care what other people think.

“So… Sandburg. Blair.” Ellison’s eyes seemed the only bright thing in the dimly lit van. Blair wondered how old Ellison was. The scraggly beard and thinning shoulder-length hair were deceiving. The guy could be 35, could be 55. He had old eyes. An old soul, his mother would say. “Who’s Naomi? And why don’t you want her here in Cascade?”

“My mother,” Blair answered automatically, then noticed the other FBI agents smirking. He straightened up. Okay, maybe he cared just a little what other people thought.

“Your mommy? You call your mommy ‘Naomi’?” Ellison’s unexpectedly white teeth made an appearance in a sardonic grin, very much at Blair’s expense.

Blair so didn’t need this right now. He hated being teased like a kid in front of his peers on his very first field assignment. It was like junior high all over again, only without the basketball. Angrily, he snapped, “You’re on a need-to-know basis here, Ellison, and _you don’t need to know.”_ He parroted Brackett’s offensive words from the previous night. Aldo and Wu looked impressed.

Ellison chuckled infuriatingly. “You learn that line at Cub Scouts, Chief?”

The other agents sniggered. It _was_ junior high all over again. Blair’d thought a doctorate or two would get him taken seriously in the world. Not so, it seemed.

The van stopped. Aldo moved to release the rear doors. After checking carefully, handgun in plain sight, he nodded at Wu. The dapper agent uncuffed Ellison, then the group exited the FBI van and headed for the loading dock at the rear of the Cascade Arms Hotel.

They crossed the lobby and headed for an elevator at the far end. He’d expected a freight elevator, and was amazed at the posh appointment of the elevator cage. It had only one button, reading ‘Penthouse’.

“For security reasons.” was the terse and unenlightening response when Blair asked why they’d booked the most luxurious suite in the hotel. Must be the private elevator, he guessed. It didn’t look like they’d done it for Ellison’s sake, that’s for damn sure. He’d watched as Aldo and Wu had unnecessarily manhandled the convict through the hotel.

The elevator decanted them directly into the suite; no lobby or shared hallway for the person who could afford to rent this swank accommodation. Taking a sweeping look around the place, Blair figured that the single penthouse and its surrounding balconies covered the entire rooftop area.

The suite was luxuriously grand in the way of hotels constructed in the early part of the last century. It was decorated in modern good taste, featuring furniture and fixtures that would still be considered classic a century into the future. Blair particularly liked the French doors that opened onto a terrace-style balcony.

Special Agent in Charge Brackett was seated at an elegant dining suite, jacket off, briefcase, laptop, cell phone, palm pilot spread before him like a telecommuter’s buffet. Ellison was ushered over to stand before him.

The two men stared at each other wordlessly, until Ellison broke the tense silence with the oddest of opening remarks: “He…” Ellison gestured with cuffed hands at Blair. “…wanted to know why we’re in the penthouse. I don’t suppose you’re trying to make it up to me for 13 years of shitty accommodations, are you, Lee?”

Surprisingly, Brackett chose to answer the non sequitur. “I personally picked this suite.” He pointed at the elevator from which they’d just disembarked. “Only one exit.”

“Built before modern fire codes,” Ellison remarked as he glanced around the room. “Still, nice to look at.” When he’d stared his fill, he turned back to Brackett. “Now, about that shower and haircut.”

 ~~~

The suite’s bathroom was wonderfully steamy from the long, hot shower. Agent Aldo sat perched on the great marble vanity that spoke of the opulence of a time long gone.

Making himself at home, Ellison sang in the shower, deliberately a little off key.

              _“Got a black magic woman._  
              I got a black magic woman.  
              Got a black magic woman,  
              Got me so blind I can’t see,  
              I got a black magic woman,  
              She tryna make a devil outta me.”

He filled in the break with the kind of scat solo that was usually accompanied by an air guitar. And a drunken teenager.

Outside the shower, Aldo chuckled softly.

Inside the shower, Jim wasn’t focused on either singing or showering. Rather, his attention was riveted on the retractable clothesline screwed to the shower wall. He tinkered and tampered with the shiny bell-shaped housing, covering any sound it might make with the serenade and normal shower sounds.

_“Got your spell on me, baby.”_

Singing and splashing, he popped off the housing, extracting the fairly substantial nylon clothesline cord.

_“Turnin’ my heart into stone.”_

Carefully, he reeled it out to its full length of about 10 feet. Using the tiny nail clippers they’d grudgingly allowed him as part of his shower kit, he quickly severed it from its anchor. Wrapping equal lengths around each hand, he closed them into fists, then jerked his fists apart a few times to test it. His narrowed eyes gleamed with intensity.

              _“I need you so bad, magic woman,  
              I can’t leave you alone.”_

 

It held. It was strong. It would do. Satisfied, he knotted a noose on one end of the cord, then coiled it around his waist.

“Towel, please.” He groped a dripping arm outside the shower stall. Agent Aldo fed a bath towel into Ellison’s outstretched fingers. Ellison emerged well-wrapped in the big fluffy towel. He reached for another to dry his upper body.

Aldo handed him a garment bag. “It’s the stuff you asked for.”

Ellison unzipped the outside pocket, pulling out a pair of boxer shorts and white socks. He held them up to his nose and sniffed them.

“Washed first in Sunlight and baking soda, just like you asked.” Aldo snorted. “How’d a con like you get so fussy?”

“The third time they put me in the infirmary with weeping rashes and breathing problems,” Ellison said easily, “they finally listened.”

“Whatever. Put ’em on. You’ve got 45 minutes for your ‘three Ss’”.

“You going to stand there and watch?”

“That’s right.”

“Whatever turns ya on.” He moved in a little closer, striking a bodybuilder pose. The towel flared like a Roman Centurion’s skirted uniform. “Whaddaya think? I still got it?”

Flustered, Agent Aldo looked away. “Just put the Goddamn clothes on. You’re not in the joint with your girlfriends now.”

Ellison chuckled, walked over to the toilet and sat, reseating himself a moment later with the towel out of the way. “Not used to a kilt,” he explained.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m doing the second of the ‘three Ss’: shower, shit and shave. Allow me to apologize in advance for the chili I had for lunch—”

“I’ll wait outside.” Aldo fled, closing the door behind him.

His goal of driving out the agent accomplished, Ellison rose and reached for his clothes.

He dressed quickly, unwrapping the clothesline from his waist and weaving it around his right wrist just above the wrist bone. It would be hidden there once he pulled on the jacket.

 ~~~

Blair watched as Brackett combed through the contents of the barber’s bag. He appeared to be confiscating anything with a blade or a point, eventually leaving the confused hairdresser with nothing but a short comb, an electric trimmer and one of those plastic smocks.

“I can’t do a decent job with these.” The stylist spread the approved items across the table in front of them as if the truth were self-evident in his limited arsenal.

“That’s all you get.”

“I’m an artist, not a barber.”

Brackett held aloft a pair of gleaming precision scissors. “If he doesn’t have these…” He made a slashing motion in the air. “He can’t stab you in the throat, now can he?”

Paling, the barber acquiesced.

“You’re dealing with a potentially volatile man here. Try not to upset him.”

The barber looked like he was about to reconsider the assignment. Blair only hoped it wouldn’t be handed off to him as pinch-hitter like the interrogation had been only a few hours ago. He felt he was probably better at interrogation than at hair styling.

 _Thirteen years,_ Blair thought again. A long, long time to be locked away. From sunlight. From human contact. From everything.

Ellison re-entered the living room, now dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. Good. So far the FBI was living up to their part of the bargain.

“Hi,” Ellison said cheerfully to the hairdresser. “You must be my miracle worker. What’s your name?”

“Uhh. Carson. S-sir.”

“Let’s go out in the sun. Cascade gets so little of it.” The two agents leapt up, blocking the French doors to the balcony. “And you won’t have to go through all the hassle of getting security clearance for some maid to come up and clean up all the hair if we do it out there.” The agents only looked more nervous. “Or you could always clean it up yourselves, I guess.”

Oh, great, Blair bitched inwardly. Another pleasant job to hand off to the junior agent.

“Okay, Ellison,” Brackett sighed. “But no tricks, now.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, tugging his right jacket sleeve further down his wrist.

Snatching the plastic smock from the table, Ellison headed for the balcony, trailed by the agents and Brackett. The nervous barber followed Ellison onto the balcony slowly, returning once more for the trimmer and comb he’d left on the table.

Blair trailed out after them, wishing he hadn’t left his sunglasses at home, but then he certainly hadn’t anticipated needing sunglasses when he’d headed out at 9:30 last night. He squinted out at the harbour. Nice day… to poison Cascade. He needed to ask Brackett about the timelines of their crisis. Maybe they didn’t really have time for a shave and a haircut.

Ellison dragged a wrought iron patio chair over near the balcony railing. The plasticized fabric of the seat cushion hissed under his weight as he sat. His damp locks cascaded wetly down the beige smock.

Carson picked up a hunk of hair, rolling the fine, limp mass between his fingers dubiously. “How would you like it, sir?”

“Whatever’s in style.” Ellison reached up, fingering his own hair. “Better make it short, though. I think I’m pretty thin on top these days.”

“ _Pretty_ thin! _Hah.”_ Brackett snorted unkindly, running a hand over his own full coif. After Brackett’s nasty comment, Blair felt uncomfortable about his own lush ponytail. Still, his grandfather was completely bald and his own forehead was starting to enlarge a bit every year. His day would come, his mind wandered.

“Right you are, sir.” Carson proceeded to hack away with the electric trimmer as best he could.

Roughly 25 minutes later, Ellison’s hair was neatly trimmed. The unkempt beard and moustache were gone altogether.

Blair was shocked at the change. Ellison was probably only in his early forties, and looked… good. Really good. The man cleaned up very well indeed. He could have been a local businessman or professor. With the short buzz cut, he could pass for an FBI agent, or any cop, for that matter.

Carson held up a mirror, turning it one way, then the other, as Ellison examined himself.

“Good. Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like it, sir. My tools were so limited.” Carson glared in Brackett’s direction. He turned back to Ellison, rubbing thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money.

“Yes, of course. My secretary will take care of you.” Ellison gestured toward Agent Wu. “See to it, will you?”

Wu glared ineffectually at Ellison. “I’m not his…”

Blair couldn’t hear the end of the statement as Wu headed back into the suite, presumably to see about paying the barber. Aldo and the barber followed, leaving Brackett and Sandburg behind on the balcony with Ellison.

“I feel like a new man.” Ellison stood and stretched hugely, gazing at the spectacular view. “I can see the Bay from here. Look over there.” He pointed northwest. “I see Cyclops Oil has put in a new drilling rig.” He opened his eyes a fraction wider. “ _The Northstar 5.”_

Brackett squinted in the direction Ellison indicated. “I don’t see anything.

Switching topics abruptly, Ellison extended his hand to Brackett. “What say we bury the hatchet, Lee?”

Brackett peered suspiciously at the proffered hand, back at the smiling Ellison, back at the hand again.

Reluctantly, he took Ellison’s hand. Ellison closed his fingers around the other man’s hand, smiling warmly, reaching the other hand up as if to cup it over their joined ones. Blair was delighted to see his boss and Ellison making peace.

In one smooth move, too fast for Blair to react, Ellison yanked Brackett toward the railing and shouldered him bodily over the balustrade.

“Bury the hatchet in your fuckin’ head!” Jim shouted down after him.

Blair was at the railing before he could think, although it took his shocked brain a second to realize Brackett hadn’t plunged to his death, but was actually hanging just below the balcony. He appeared to be tied by one wrist.

Brackett howled and grasped his roped wrist with his free hand as he dangled precariously 14 stories above the pavement.

“Oh, God,” Blair moaned aloud. A quick survey of the situation revealed that the other end of the rope wasn’t knotted. The only thing preventing Brackett from plunging to his death was James Ellison on the balcony, clutching the thin nylon rope in his bare hands.

“Jesus… Jesus Christ…” Falling back on the academy training from his first days with the FBI, Blair fumbled for his gun. After a moment’s struggle with the velcro’d flap, he managed to unholster it and point it shakingly in Ellison’s direction. Blair’s panicky order— “Haul him back up here. Now!” —was accompanied by a medley of obscenities, screams and pleas from the dangling Brackett.

Turning his attention from his captor-turned-captive, Ellison focused on Blair. Conversationally, Ellison said, “Drop the gun or I’ll drop your boss.” He moved the rope around a bit, causing the very vocal Brackett to bump against the hotel wall. “Guess you’ll just have to shoot me, Chief. And by the way, that’s a great plan for saving your boss.”

He actually had the audacity to wink.

 ~~~

Erring on the side of caution, two additional FBI agents had been stationed outside the Cascade Arms. They loitered by their vehicle, filling the time with smoking and plotting, as well as keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. It took a few minutes for the screams to filter down to them across the distance and competing traffic noises, but, eventually, they looked skyward.

“Holy shit! We got a jumper!”

Quickly retrieving binoculars from the field kit in the truck, the second FBI agent proclaimed in shock, “Oh, my God! It’s Agent Brackett!”

“What’s the hell’s going on up there?” The rhetorical question was barked as the other agent hit a speed dial on his cell phone and waited for the agents above to answer.

 ~~~

Back on the rooftop, Ellison terrorized Sandburg further by declaring theatrically, “My arm’s getting tired. Oops…” He dropped Brackett a foot lower in the Agent’s involuntary rappel. Brackett’s howling, sounding angry as much as afraid, drifted clearly back up to the terrace. Ellison knew the other agents weren’t present to hear it, though, having heard them leave the penthouse to escort the barber back down to the lobby.

Sandburg pointlessly shouted for help, dropped his gun and grabbed the rope. Ellison let him have it and bolted from the balcony back into the suite. Once inside, he ran to the dining room table and snatched up Brackett’s cell phone, then backed up a few more steps and crouched beneath the massive oak sideboard. From this strategic position, he could see the rest of the suite and out onto the balcony. The cell picked that moment to emit its shrill whine for attention. Fiddling with the unfamiliar device, he managed to hit the tiniest of toggle switches on one side, which apparently turned the ring down to nothing—or at least nothing the Fibbies were likely to hear.

Just in time, too, as Aldo and Wu burst back into the penthouse. From their comments, the unseen Ellison ascertained they’d been alerted by their colleagues on ground detail. No doubt they’d tried to call Brackett’s cell as well.

Aldo ran out to assist Sandburg while Wu searched for Ellison. Since the suite was bisected by the main living room, there was a 50/50 chance the agent would head left instead of right, where Ellison crouched in readiness—readiness for either stealthy escape or for violent struggle. For once in 13 years, luck was on his side and Wu headed left.

On the balcony, Aldo and Sandburg finally managed to hoist Brackett, red-faced and sputtering, over the railing and onto terra firma. _Terrace firma,_ Ellison corrected himself, enjoying his revenge to the fullest.

He stole soundlessly across the suite, through the vestibule and into the elevator. Just as the doors were closing, Ellison heard Aldo make his report into some sort of communication device, probably a walkie-talkie.

“All units, this is Caretaker. We’ve got a signal six. Ellison’s in the elevator. Get him back! Now!”

 ~~~

The private penthouse elevator offered two choices: penthouse or lobby. Ellison considered his choices briefly. He was already fleeing the penthouse, so that was out, although it definitely held the element of surprise. And the lobby would already be swarming with agents. So, no, neither of these would do.

Instead, he braced for an alarm and hit the emergency stop button. Sure enough, it immediately activated the banshee wail that alerted the hotel someone was trapped in the elevator. He had to work fast. This alarm needed to be turned off, pronto.

He pried open a small locked door in the panelling, using his bath-time nail clippers. Behind it was a third button: “Hotel Staff Only”. He released the emergency stop and pressed this new button. The wailing alarm stopped instantly, thank God, and the elevator began to descend. He laid one hand on the door to feel the vibrations and listened carefully, counting each hollowness he passed. Twelve, 13, 14… He gusted a great sigh of relief as he bypassed the lobby and descended to some sort of sub-basement.

It was a kitchen sort of sub-basement, Ellison determined from the smells and aromas before the doors even opened. Exiting the elevator, he snatched a slightly stained white apron from a hook on the wall and wrapped it quickly around his waist. Seizing a sweating water jug from a nearby serving cart, he made his way as unobtrusively as possible through the orderly chaos that was the Cascade Arms’ main kitchen.

His ordinary jeans and purloined white apron blended in where the dark suits of the two pursuing FBI agents would not. Behind him he could hear Aldo and Wu being stopped by the head chef, demanding to know what they were doing there. Ellison had gambled and won on the fact that they looked far too much like health inspectors to be allowed unrestricted access to her kitchen.

Taking advantage of the brief distraction, he ducked into the dishwasher room. As anticipated, the agents, once they’d flashed badges and escaped the officious chef, took the path to the closest exit. He’d calculated correctly that they’d guess that’s what he’d do. Instead, he waited for the agents to run past his refuge.

Once the pursuers had moved on, Ellison emerged, scanning the ceiling area for the closest exit sign in the _other_ direction. Spotting it, he strode toward it, smacking right into Blair Sandburg.

“Ellison! Listen, I…”

Feeling something that might have once been regret, Ellison’s fist slammed effectively into Sandburg’s jaw. The agent went down dazed, sliding to the floor before a huge dishwashing machine.

The desperate escapee took a moment to move Blair’s head out of a damp spot before heading quickly toward the other exit.

Ellison exited the hotel just a few yards from the parking valet kiosk. It was busy, with no less than a dozen cars queued up to be parked: BMWs, Jags, Mercedes. A Ferrari. First in line, however, was a not-so-new blue Ford pickup. To Ellison, the pickup was perfect. Perfect for fitting in, perfect for going unnoticed. With any luck, the agents wouldn’t even ascertain what vehicle he’d borrowed until he had a good head start.

He’d been incredibly lucky already today. Maybe after 13 years in jail, he’d accumulated enough good luck to get him safely away from here.

 

  
**Chapter 13. Flight**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 10:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 1:30 pm**

**Time Remaining: 21.5 hours**

 

But luck wasn’t with Ellison this time. Blair, having recovered from the blow, reached the exterior of the hotel just in time to witness Ellison climbing into the Ford. The pickup exploded out of the hotel driveway.

“That’s him!” Blair shouted at the two agents who’d been stationed outside.

The outside agents responded promptly to Blair’s shouts and gestures, leaping into their FBI sedan and roaring off in hot pursuit, followed closely by a second, almost identical sedan containing Aldo and Wu from the penthouse detail.

The next car in the valet line was the Ferrari.

 _“FBI! Emergency! Line of duty!”_ Blair shouted in the general direction of the valet who was currently hauling his butt out of the flowerbed where Ellison must have tossed him. Blair flung himself into the Ferrari’s driver’s seat, cranked the ignition and flew after the others, knuckles white on the wheel.

 ~~~

Stuck at a stoplight behind several other cars, Ellison realized he’d been noticed after all. Noticed _and pursued._ This became abundantly clear as two black sedans appeared in his rear view mirror, closing rapidly. Thinking fast, he rammed the stick shift into gear and threw the wheel to the right, sideswiping a parked VW Beetle in the process. Ellison winced in sympathy when he heard the crunch and whine of twisting metal.

Leaving behind the damaged Beetle, the pickup bounced up onto the sidewalk, scattering startled pedestrians and decimating a fruit stand. Cherries, apples and mangoes bled out all over the pavement.

He roared through the intersection, leaving the FBI sedans trapped at the light behind other cars. Ellison’s pickup ploughed on through the traffic. He had a few near misses and a few not-misses as he left a wake of pissed-off drivers behind him.

The pickup engine groaned in metallic protest as Ellison accelerated up the very steep Channing Street hill. Well back of him, the sedans followed.

Inside the pickup, Ellison switched on the radio: _“This just in. More than a dozen of Cascade’s finest are currently involved in a high-speed chase on Channing Street, north of Prospect…”_

Chuckling, he turned down the volume and reached for Brackett’s cell phone, which he’d snatched from the penthouse on his way out. He studied it a moment, managing to at least turn it back on. Cell phones hadn’t been all that common before he’d been locked away, and back then, the technology hadn’t been so teeny and fragile looking. He felt like a giant holding the tiny metallic sliver in his hand, and where was the keypad? Did they even have keypads anymore? Eyes darting from the road to the device, he felt an urge to flip it open and say “Beam me up, Scottie.” Guessing that fiction often foretells fact, he followed his hunch and, _flip,_ there was the keypad.

“Modern conveniences,” he said to the phone, half expecting it to respond to voice commands. “Dial,” he tried. Then, “4-1-1”. When it didn’t respond, he delicately punched in 4-1-1 on the little keypad. His eyes flitted rapidly from the road before him to the pursuers behind him to the cell phone in his hand.

In response to the operator’s electronic, then human queries, Ellison stated: “Cascade”. “Plummer, Carolyn”. “That’s P-L-U-M… Two Ms. Yes. Plummer. No B.” “Connect me? Yes, that would be great. Thanks.”

Still heading north up Channing Hill, Ellison reached another red light. Crossing the intersection in front of him was a bottled water truck loaded with giant five-gallon plastic jugs. Emblazoned on the side of the truck were the words: “Crystal Springs. For home and office delivery.”

Daringly, illegally, Ellison ran the red, swerving the pickup dangerously to one side in an attempt to avoid the delivery truck. He was almost safely through when, at the last second, he veered the pickup so that it tagged the water truck’s back end. The truck was knocked sideways across the intersection. Ellison’s Ford blasted away just as dozens and dozens of huge water jugs tumbled from the truck bed. The mostly shatterproof cargo did a bizarre bottle dance, bouncing, rolling, slipping, and cascading down Channing Hill. Gravity did its thing and the errant jugs gained speed as they began to merge with the oncoming traffic.

Watching the road in front of him and the chaos in his rear-view mirror, Ellison relaxed a little. He’d lost his pursuers. The two black sedans and the police cruisers were stuck in the watery carnage back at the intersection. He’d draw less attention to himself if he slowed down, drove legally.

“Hello?” His phone call had finally connected.

“Is this Carolyn Plummer?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Jim Ellison.” He waited a long moment, but no comment was forthcoming. At least she hadn’t hung up on him. “Don’t be shocked. I don’t have much time. Please listen carefully…”

 ~~~

In the commandeered Ferrari, Blair, too, was on the phone, having reached his boss through Sanchez’s cell. “He’s right in front of me, sir. There’s a bunch of police cars between him and me, but I can see him up the hill. Oh _, shit._ Gotta go.”

Giant plastic bottles appeared on his horizon, bearing down on the cavalcade of law enforcement vehicles like a rain of watery meteors. Just ahead of him, a bottle rolled and bounced onto the hood of one of the police cruisers. The patrolmen had only a moment to shield their eyes before it crashed through their windshield, showering them with diamond-like particles of shatter-resistant glass.

Bottle after bottle battered the front-running vehicles, denting hoods, smashing windshields. Suddenly, Blair was glad he hadn’t been right behind Ellison’s pickup. Cars careened into each other in their attempts to avoid the descending horde. The two FBI sedans and Blair’s Ferrari managed to escape the gauntlet relatively unharmed. They raced through the onslaught after Ellison again.

 ~~~

Although his clash with the water truck hadn’t been entirely intentional, it had definitely worked to Ellison’s advantage. His respite was short lived, however, as he realized he was still being pursued. The only cars he’d managed to lose were the local police.

His borrowed truck picked up speed again as it finally reached the crest of Channing Hill, bursting over it at 90 miles an hour. It soared a moment before hammering down on its serviceable shocks.

Only a moment later, the FBI sedans, followed by Blair’s Ferrari, rocketed after it.

At the bottom of Channing Hill was another intersection—an intersection under construction.Two road workers were in the process of sliding a massive steel plate over a ditch cut in the asphalt, probably for a water main. The flag girl screamed a warning as Ellison’s truck sped directly at them. The workers dove to safety just as the pickup blasted across the steel plate. The weight and momentum served to dislodge it from its unstable position. It lurched and swayed on the lip of the ditch.

The first FBI sedan hit the teetering steel plate, which immediately collapsed under the extra weight. The sedan nosed into the pit and was swallowed halfway, its rear end thrust up in the air like a shiny black vehicular ostrich. Having followed far too closely, the second FBI sedan slammed into the frontrunner’s exposed undercarriage.

Watching in his rear-view mirror, Ellison counted both vehicles out of the action for good. Angling the mirror just so, he could make out the battered agents who were beginning to emerge from the wreckage. No one hurt. Good.

Ellison applauded himself for deterring the FBI agents as well as the Cascade PD. It was only then that he realized he did, indeed, have yet another tail.

“Sandburg!” he muttered, surprised, after bouncing his sight off the rear view and penetrating the heavily tinted Ferrari windows. He refocussed on the road quickly enough to send his head and stomach spinning. Better not do that again.

Ellison’s pickup, with Blair’s Ferrari close behind, raced down the next sloping street. In the intersection ahead, a streetcar was turning down the hill. Ellison’s pickup followed, but as it rounded the corner, an old woman started out across the street. Unable to stop at his present high speed, Ellison threw the wheel to the left, swerving to successfully avoid her.

Ellison realized he was maybe a just a tad out of practice at driving. Still, he was completely unprepared when the pickup’s bumper caught the back of the streetcar. The impact served to dislodge the rear steel wheels from the tracks. Front wheels lodged in the tracks, slowly, with the incredible squeal of metal on metal, the behemoth began to slide sideways.

The intensity of the shrieking metal and grinding wheels on pavement nearly caused Ellison to lose control of the pickup. He just barely managed to pull over to the side of the road and cover his ears for the duration. He wished, not for the first time, that he had some way to desensitize his hearing. He struggled for control, and tried not to black out.

 ~~~

Seeing the massive streetcar sliding at him sideways, Blair slammed on the brakes. The Ferrari executed a precise 360 and came to a grinding halt facing uphill, looking right at the oncoming trolley.

“This is _so_ not happening!” Blair declared loudly to no one as the Ferrari’s oversensitive air bag exploded in his face. But instead of immediately deflating, as air bags are supposed to do, it stayed pumped. Blair was pinned in the driver’s seat like a bug to a cork.

Caught as he was, Blair could focus his gaze nowhere else but back uphill. He watched in growing terror as, with an ear-splitting soundtrack, the streetcar slid in slow motion straight for him. The behemoth spewed sparks and passengers in all directions. The driver appeared to be the last to leap to safety.

 _Oh, God. Oh, God._ The air bag pushing against his chest made breathing difficult. Or maybe it was an oncoming anxiety attack as the streetcar grew larger and larger in his line of sight.

Adrenaline adding strength beyond normal, Blair managed to free his left arm from the elbow down. He bit his lower lip and managed to stretch far enough to grab the door latch. The door sprang open with little effort, but the Goddamn air bag was still all over him, pinning him in the seat. With no time to struggle, almost without thinking, Blair twisted his right wrist as hard as he could, piercing the fucking air bag with the cell phone antenna. He’d still had the phone in his hand from his brief call to Brackett.

Shooting from the doomed sports car just in time, he rolled well out of the way and scrambled onto the sidewalk. Stumbling a few more steps, he reached and clung to the pillared façade of an old bank. He clutched the life-saving cell phone in one sweaty palm—no way was he ever going anywhere without this lucky talisman again.

The streetcar swept over the Ferrari like some kind of evil metal tsunami. The crash and groan was absolutely deafening.

 

Obeying the laws of physics, the streetcar continued its trajectory a few more yards until acted upon by an outside unbalanced force in the form of a garbage truck. It gently wrapped itself around the thankfully abandoned truck in a twisted metal embrace, the bright red of the Ferrari peeking out here and there.

Dazed, shaking, nearly freaking out, Blair let go of the neo-Corinthian column, staggering out onto the street to observe the scene. Despite the inestimable property damage, it appeared no one was badly hurt. A new gang of police were arriving at the scene, along with paramedics and fire trucks. Blair began to insinuate himself into the gathering crowd of onlookers, knowing that the FBI would _not_ want to admit their involvement at this point, or perhaps at all. At least not until their public relations people and spin doctors could work their marketing magic.

If he could just blend with the gawkers, not be identified as a participant…

“You really fucked up your Ferrari, man.” A young punk on a motorcycle rolled up directly in front of him.

“It’s not mine, man.” The best lie is often the truth. “Can I see that?” He held out his hand for the full-coverage helmet.

“Cool. Sure.” He handed Blair the black-visored helmet. They grinned at each other a moment amid the sirens and the yelling, the smoke and the wreckage. Blair eyed the souped up racing bike.

“That been modified for city use?” The owner nodded proudly. “Bet it’s great on corners.” Blair donned the helmet.

The kid began to look a little nervous. “You always take things that aren’t yours?”

“It’s part of my job.” Blair advanced on the kid. “And incidentally, I’ll be taking the bike, too.”

Relying on the element of surprise and the low centre of gravity on the bike, he shoved the kid off the motorcycle, yanking it back upright and climbing on all in a matter of seconds.

Stunned and shocked, the kid managed only “hey!” as Blair sped off into traffic.

It’d been a long time since Blair had ridden a bike, but this was a real beaut. He’d been right about the corners. Taking a moment to relocate Ellison’s stolen truck in the traffic, he pulled his life-saving cell phone from his pocket and punched in numbers from memory. He tailed Ellison without trying to get any closer, just trying not to lose him this time.

 

 

**Chapter 14. Out of the Past**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 11:00 am**

**Washington D.C. Time: Saturday, 2:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 21 hours**

 

“Bio-Chem Lab. Dr. Skinner speaking.”

“Sam? This is Blair. I need you to do something for me. It’s a matter of life or death.”

For a moment she thought he was just kidding around with her, but something about his tone made her sit up straight and acknowledge.

“What’s that racket? I can barely hear you.” She plugged her non-phone ear with her finger. “Sounds like you’re near a motorcycle or something.”

“Not near it. On it! High-speed chase. I need you to go on the ’net and look up the intake records for Ventriss Prison. Link into the Department of Justice site through the FBI intranet. Should give you access.”

Leaving the gaming site she’d been visiting over her lunchtime Lean Cuisine, Sam quickly keyed in the URL Blair dictated. “It’s telling me I haven’t got clearance.”

“Use my codes, then. User name is “blair-dot-sandburg”, all lowercase. Password: ‘Sentinel’.”

She spared not a thought for the fact that using her co-worker’s clearance could get them both in huge trouble career-wise.

“Okay,” she reported. “I’m in.”

“I need you to find a record of a prisoner transferred to Ventriss. The inmate I’m looking for is Ellison, James something. Uh, Joseph, I think. Should be around 1998 or so. I’m not sure what facility he transferred in from.”

She quickly accessed the intake files. “Lessee… ‘Edwards, Elms, Elliott’. Nope. No ‘Ellison’ transferred to Ventriss in 1997, 1998, _or_ 1999\. In fact,” she reported, tapping keys in quick sequence, “according to this database, nobody named ‘Ellison’ has ever transferred to Ventriss. This a relative of yours, Blair?”

“Not now, Sam.” There was a pause on his end of the call. “Go to Ventriss’ medical records. Look for someone with a lot of serious allergic reactions. Soaps, laundry stuff, whatever.”

“Uhhh.” She clicked through screens of information. “Looks like there’s a couple of guys who spent a lot of time in the infirmary. One was… a David Lash. No, wait. He was transferred to Conover mental institution…”

“Hurry up, Sam. You’re killing me here.”

She continued her thorough perusal, stating, “…and a… They don’t have a name. Just ‘Prisoner X’.”

A few more keystrokes. “This is weird, Blair. They’ve got extensive medical records on this guy. There’s a ton of allergic reactions, foods he can’t eat, chemicals he can’t be near. It even lists place of birth as Cascade. But no name. Just ‘Prisoner X’.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam continued, a scientist with a new mystery to solve. “There’s a next of kin listed: Carolyn Plummer, wife, 852 Prospect Avenue, Apartment 307, Cascade. Blair, did you, like, fuck something up? Blair? _Blair?”_

“Thanks, Sam. Your country thanks you.”

 ~~~

He’d wedged the phone between his ear and the helmet. The protective padding held the phone in place so he could keep both hands on the bike. Now he slid the phone out of the helmet and stuffed it back in his jacket pocket, making sure the Velcro fastener was secure. That phone had been amazingly helpful today, and he was going to need it again in a few minutes.

He narrowly avoided an SUV trying to pull a single car length ahead. The oblivious driver applied mascara in the rear-view mirror while chatting cheerfully on her cell. After all the nerve-wracking bullshit and vehicular destruction Blair had survived today, no way was he getting taken out by some airhead yuppie in a purple Pathfinder.

As the killer SUV moved out of his line of sight, he spotted Ellison turning a corner two blocks ahead. Blair roared off after him. He was so not going to lose him at this point. Brackett would kill him, plus Blair still had no idea what this guy had done to get himself incarcerated for 13 years. As far as Blair knew, Ellison could well be a menace to society. “Need-to-know basis” _, shit!_ He’d certainly been a menace to Brackett and to Cascade traffic. Still, Blair pondered as he leaned into the turn, it didn’t look like a single person had been killed or even injured after all this. The whole thing with the streetcar had been caused by Ellison swerving to avoid hitting the old lady. Could have happened to anyone, couldn’t it? Those literary references to innocent men still haunted him.

Blair pulled up in front of 852 Prospect, an older low-rise apartment building with a bakery on the street level. His stomach rumbled at the wonderful yeasty smells emanating from the shop. He’d only had time for a coffee-stand bagel since he’d received the summons… was it only last evening?

Thinking about food, Blair parked the motorcycle across the street and waited. Almost immediately, the lobby door opened. An attractive redhead in her mid to late thirties exited. She was tall, attractive, with a purposeful air about her. She scanned the area as if looking for someone, then headed off to the left.

Blair pushed the kickstand into place and dismounted the borrowed bike. He left the helmet perched on the seat and followed the redhead on foot, hoping to God this was actually Carolyn Plummer. And that she was, in fact, going to meet Ellison, not just heading off for an afternoon at the spa or something.

His surreptitious shadowing had lasted only a block and a half when his quarry crossed the street and entered a small park with well-tended gardens. She headed toward a fancy rotunda of classical design, cutting around it and seating herself on a stone bench.

Blair followed openly several yards behind until he reached the rotunda and was able to secret himself behind a large concrete pillar. From his position he should be able to both see and hear without being seen himself.

Moments later, Ellison materialized before her like a wizard.

“Carolyn.”

 _Bingo._ Blair’d tailed the right person after all.

“Jimmy.”

Blair winced. She sounded cold, hostile even. She certainly wasn’t glad to see him. But she’d come when called, so she had to care at least a little. Or maybe she was just curious. In retrospect, Blair wished he’d had Sam run a search on Carolyn Plummer as well. Maybe they were international terrorists. Or serial killers. Or… Or…

“Hello, Caro. Good to see you again.” Ellison ran a hand over his newly coiffed head, not a hair out of place despite the recent high-speed getaway. Not that there were that many hairs to start with.

“I, uh… I’m not quite sure what to say. This is all a bit much…”

Several police cars roared past, sirens blaring. Ellison flinched visibly, but it looked to Blair more like pain than panic. The cars continued on their way, probably to the carnage they’d left behind.

“Let’s walk a bit.”

“You did always like to be a moving target, Jimmy. Didn’t you?”

Ellison chuckled, and, in a oddly old-fashioned gesture, reached to take her arm.

They strolled down a path bounded by a four-foot hedge. Blair duck-walked on the other side of the hedge to keep them within earshot without being seen. He didn’t give a shit about the odd looks he garnered from passersby on his side of the hedge.

“So, Jim, how long have you been out?”

“A while,” Jim answered vaguely.

Well, thought Blair. Not exactly a lie.

“A while,” she repeated. “And you didn’t call? You’re free now, right?”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?” Another clever obfuscation. Blair admired the master. He was fairly accomplished in the fine art of misdirection himself.

Through the base of the bushes where the leaves were thinner, Blair watched their feet. He could see that Carolyn had stopped on the path and turned to face Ellison. Blair wished he could see her face as she asked part angrily, part plaintively, “Why now? I mean, why today?”

“I was driving through Cascade. I decided it was time.”

The exact truth. Not a word of a lie.

“Well, it’s very nice of you to look me up in your free time. I know our four-month marriage during your last escape was the highlight of my life.”

Okay. Only angry now. And sarcastic.

“Caro, I tried to explain in my letters.”

Blair shifted to one side where a gap in the hedge allowed him to see his subjects a little better, at least from the chest down.

“Ah. What letters? I never received a single letter.”

“I see,” Ellison grumbled. “Goddamn prison censors.”

“How about explaining now?”

More police sirens. From the movement of his torso, Blair assumed Ellison was scanning the area.

“Maybe this isn’t the best time after all, Carolyn. Here, sit down.”

Ellison and Carolyn sat on a nearby bench. Blair rabbitted around the bushes and was able to find a safe spot where he could scrunch down right behind them. Another thin spot in the foliage, and he could see their profiles as they faced each other.

More sirens. Ellison looked nervously off into the distance.

“I’ll explain it all. You must trust me,” Ellison said. “Someday very soon, after I get a few things settled, I will come back for you. What I need to know is, do you want me in your life?”

“Jimmy. Jim. How can I answer that? I don’t even know you.”

Jim sighed, “Where to begin? My name is Jim Ellison. I was born and raised right here in Cascade. Attended Heydash High. I played football and graduated with honours before entering the military. I was an Army Ranger. Did a business degree courtesy of Uncle Sam. My favourite colour is blue. I like books. I like the Jags. I like a good joke. At one time I shot a halfway decent round of golf. I’m in my forties and I’ve been locked away for the last 13 years.”

This soliloquy astounded Blair, not only with its informational (although surprisingly mundane) content, but also because it was the longest thing he’d heard from Ellison cumulatively so far in their brief acquaintance.

Carolyn looked down at her hands, then away.

“Maybe it’s better I just go,” Ellison added after a minute.

She smiled. “But you don’t know me, either.” She put her hand on his.

Police sirens blared. They seemed closer this time.

Ellison sprang up, looking for escape, but Carolyn pulled a small gun from her purse and aimed it at him.

“You see, Jimmy, you’ve lied to me before and you’re lying again now. How can I trust you? As soon as you called me, I contacted the cops. Hell, I’m a police technician myself. Did you ever even know that?”

Blair quickly straightened up and joined them through a nearby cut in the hedge.

Ellison looked unsurprised at Blair’s sudden appearance, but he made no attempt to flee. Carolyn turned to Blair.

Blair flashed his identification “FBI, ma’am. Mr. Ellison is working with us on a case. He’s helping us resolve a…” Blair met Ellison’s eyes. “…dangerous situation.”

Carolyn studied Blair’s ID without lowering her gun. Baffled, she asked, “He is?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Whatever else Jim Ellison may have been, he’d been well raised. “Carolyn Plummer, let me introduce my, uh, partner, Agent Blair Sandburg. Dr. Sandburg, my wife, Carolyn Plummer.”

She shook her head. “That’s ex-wife, actually. And it’s Plummer-Wolfe now. I’ve remarried. Made a life for myself that doesn’t include four-month marriages.”

Ellison looked sad but not surprised. “Good for you, Caro.”

Blair laid a gentle hand on Ellison’s arm, saying softly, “We’ve got to go now, Jim.”

Ellison was definitely caught off guard, though, when Carolyn lunged for him and wrapped him up in a tight hug. Releasing him, she turned to the approaching Cascade PD, who appeared to know her on sight, calling them off with explanations of mistaken identify, mixed-up jurisdictions.

Ellison walked rapidly away with Blair.

Agents Aldo and Wu met them halfway between the street and the rotunda. Only a small cut above Wu’s eyebrow indicated they’d just been in a two-car pileup. Aldo reached inside his jacket, producing shiny steel handcuffs.

Glancing back the way they’d just come, Blair saw Carolyn and the local cops tracking their retreat. “No cuffs till we get to the car,” Blair ordered.

The agents argued with him but made no move to buck his authority, although exactly what his authority was Blair would have been at a loss to explain.

Ignoring the protesting agents, Ellison said to Blair, “You surprised me, Sandburg. Now I’m going to surprise myself.” He took a deep breath and extended his hand. Remembering Brackett and the balcony, Blair took the proffered hand with trepidation.

Ellison grasped it warmly. “Thank you. You could have handled that differently.”

“I probably should have. And I’m sure I’ll be hearing about it from my boss.” He nodded his head toward Wu and Aldo.

Ellison smiled at him, holding onto Blair’s hand a fraction longer than necessary. Something about this really ticked Blair off. How dare this man behave in such a casual and friendly manner after all he’d put Blair through today? The adrenaline that had been pumping into his system most of the last 24 hours started to catch up with him. He could feel his nerves fraying, temper rising.

“You almost got me killed today!” He snatched his hand back possessively, barely refraining from clutching it to his chest like a wounded animal.

“How’s the jaw?” Ellison’s grin widened.

Blair felt battered and used, and hated being mocked. He felt the last vestige of control slip and his temper snapped.

He wheeled on Ellison and swung. Ellison caught Blair’s fist mere inches from his face. Frozen in a trembling tableau, the combatants struggled for power, an unspoken pissing contest.

Eventually, Blair gave in against Ellison’s greater strength, conceding with aplomb as his anger drained away, having found a satisfactory outlet.

“It hurts. Thanks for asking.” Like his jaw, his knuckles ached a little from the struggle, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to show it.

Sanchez, Brackett and the other FBI agents appeared. Brackett’s arm was in a sling and he was in a volcanic rage.

“You cocksucker!” Brackett screamed in Ellison’s face. “You dislocated my shoulder and cost the city of Cascade two million dollars! You try to escape again and Sanchez here will break your legs.”

Sanchez positioned herself at Ellison’s side, glaring.

“Nice to see you again,” Ellison said to her, still smiling that killer smile. “You’re looking lovely.”

God, thought Blair. This guy has a real talent for pissing people off.

 

 

 

**Chapter 15. Switchman**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 12:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 3:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 20 hours**

 

In a city of loft-style condos and upscale urban renewal, the area of the Cascade Harbour facing Storm Island had remained undesirable and underdeveloped real estate. The harbourfront was relegated to shipping and storage and other related industries, a view of the Cascade Correctional Center never having been high on anyone’s list of preferred vistas. And as import/export had been a risky endeavour back in the earliest days of Storm Island, so it remained, and the warehouses and commercial buildings in the area prospered, failed, and changed hands often, perhaps to prosper again.

It was a relatively simple matter, therefore, for the FBI to reach out with one of their many layered identities and secure a large, fairly modern facility to serve as their temporary headquarters. Once a munitions factory, then a brewery, and more recently a warehouse for K-Mart, it would now serve as command central for the duration of the current terrorist crisis.

The recently inhabited warehouse was situated on a spit of land jutting out into Rainier Bay. Its massive barred windows offered a perfect view of Storm Island, but it was far enough from the main core that it probably wouldn’t suffer, should “Operation Cypher”, as the SEAL incursion plan had been dubbed, and the top secret willy peter contingency plan both fail.

In the short time since General Oliver had initiated his Ebola-hybrid gas threat, the FBI had not been idle. The large, multi-windowed room was full of maps and machinery, computers and controls. It looked like NASA or the bridge of the starship _Enterprise_.

Brackett stood at the coffee station. He drew a long sip of over-brewed coffee and watched Commander Connor try to make headway with Jim Ellison.

Ellison sat at the head of a large rectangular table a few feet away. On the table was a scale model of Triple-C prison. Connor and two other Navy SEALs sat on either side of him, grilling him endlessly. Brackett had ordered them to suck from Ellison everything he’d learned about Storm Island in general and the Triple-C facility in particular.

Getting nowhere fast with Ellison, the rather agitated Connor repeated sharply, “Okay, one more time. We go down this second fork for 57 paces, which leads to a septic chamber. Turn left at the water pump, then 42 paces to the prison showers—”

“No. It’s 42 paces to the septic chamber. Fifty-seven to the showers.” Ellison reached for another sandwich on the plastic tray before them.

Connor checked her notes, and then glared at him pointedly. “That’s not what you said three minutes ago.” Her accent thickened as she became more and more frustrated with his chicanery.

“It’s not?” Ellison was innocence embodied.

She stared daggers at him. “Excuse me.” She rose and gestured to Brackett.

Brackett followed Connor into a small side room; a jungle gym of pipes lined the wall. Heatedly, Connor demanded, “I ask for someone with knowledge of the Island’s tunnels. You give me a bloody convict who wants to play mind games!”

“He knows every inch of those tunnels, Commander.”

“He may well at that, but if he does he’s keeping it to himself. He’s fucking with me and I don’t have the time. Or the inclination.”

“Well, you’ll just have to make…” He paused mid-command. “What if he went with you?”

“Are you out of your…” She also stopped midsentence, probably rethinking her disrespectful comment. “Sir,” she began again. Brackett felt slightly mollified. “I believe that’s out of the question. We know we can’t trust him. He’ll endanger the mission. He’ll endanger my team. He’s a security risk. Who says he won’t bolt as soon as we turn our backs on him?” She crossed thin arms over her chest. “I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t either. And I don’t trust the information he’s giving us here in this room. If he’s there in the flesh, though, at least he’ll need to keep you and your team safe in order to keep himself safe.” Brackett scrubbed a hand across his face tiredly. “And as for making him cooperate, I’ll handle that.” He thrust his head back into the main room, where the inquisition had come to a standstill. Ellison was looking at him expectantly, almost as if he’d heard their conversation. “Special Agent Sanchez. Will you join us for a moment? And bring Mr. Ellison as well, please?”

Menacingly, Sanchez escorted Ellison over, leaning into him as she took his elbow in gender-reversed mock chivalry.

“You’re not cooperating with us here, Jim.”

“Me? Not cooperat—”

“Cut the innocent act. We don’t have time.” Brackett studied Ellison’s expression carefully. Ellison looked calmly interested. “I’m going to lift the need-to-know policy for now in the hope that you’ll get it through your head just how important this is.” Ellison’s expression didn’t change. Brackett drew a breath and pressed on. “I’m sure you’re curious about what’s happening on Triple-C to make us haul your sorry ass out of solitary and ask for your help.”

He paused theatrically, waiting for Ellison to respond. Ellison just stared implacably, taking another bite of the sandwich he’d brought along.

Eventually Brackett continued. “A group of United States Marines—a terrorist rogue force—have seized Storm Island. They’ve appropriated six poison gas rockets that are now aimed at the city. There’s enough poison gas to kill every man, woman and child here in Cascade. That’s your home town, isn’t it, Jim?” Now Ellison looked appalled. “Yes, Jim, including your father, your brother and his family, your ex-wife…”

“You son of a bitch! Why didn’t you tell me? I could have at least convinced her to leave.” Ellison flung the sandwich away, no longer impassive.

Brackett spoke to Connor over Jim’s shoulder. “There, Commander. You see how easy that was? Our Mr. Ellison now has a strong incentive to help us, doesn’t he?”

“A word, sir? In private.” Connor glared meaningfully at Ellison. And Sanchez.

“Take him back to the table, please, Special Agent Sanchez.” Then to Connor, “What?”

“Is he an honourable man? Does he really care about the lives of others?”

Brackett allowed her to hold his gaze.

“I realize, Commander, that you’ve not been told the nature of Ellison’s crimes, the reason he’s been locked away all these years, and I’m not at liberty to disclose that to you now…”

“Yes, sir. Need to know. I understand.”

“Right. Good. I wish everyone did.” He glared back at the main room where Sandburg toyed with the coffee machine and fixings. He’d badgered Brackett repeatedly for more details about Ellison’s sins once they’d returned from their hectic and costly car chase. “But I will tell you that he’s not the sort who would endanger human life needlessly. In fact, before we locked him up, I feel fairly certain he would have risked his own life for the benefit of others.”

She left that alone, much to Brackett’s relief. She seemed focused only on Project Cypher and the task at hand. “And now?”

“Who knows how such a long period of solitary confinement can affect a man?” He gave a few additional instructions to Connor and strode back into the main room.

At the table, Ellison sat with arms crossed, staring evilly at Brackett as he traversed the room.

“Get him some gear. He’s going to the island!” Brackett ordered. “Sandburg!”

 ~~~

Across the room, Blair sat before a large and powerful computer. Three-dimensional images of the stolen rockets spun across his screen. At Brackett’s summons, he grabbed his coffee and joined the others at the boardroom table.

Blair had been introduced to Connor and the other SEALs when they first arrived. He’d made careful note of their names: Brian Rafe, Henry Brown, and Jack Pendergrast. They’d been provided with a succinct rundown of his background and role in the operation.

As he approached the table, they stared at him curiously, grimly. He knew that look well. Most people displayed that same expression when they considered his chosen career. These SEALs were the bravest of the brave, risking a watery grave on a regular basis. But he knew from experience that at this point they were asking themselves what kind of man made poisons and contagions his life’s work.

He took the seat across from Ellison as Connor moved on with her briefing. “Okay. Now that everyone knows what’s going on, we can take our planning up a level. Our ultimate goal is to take out the launchers and neutralize the Ebola-hybrid gas chem rounds. Dr. Sandburg, tell us what you know.”

Sandburg flipped a switch on the LCD projector and the entire wall behind them was blanketed with a satellite capture of the island. Fiddling with the computer’s optical mouse until he was in danger of losing his audience’s attention, he managed to zero in on the main prison building.

“As you can see, thermal image photos picked up the poison gas rockets here, here and… here.” The handheld controls featured a nifty laser pointer, which Blair used to highlight various points on the schematic of Triple-C. All they could tell from the photos was that the rockets were in three different places in the compound: two at points along the perimeter of the building, and one centred. “The poison has probably not been inserted into the rockets at this point. They’d keep it all in the morgue, of course.”

His professional colleagues had consisted exclusively of bio-chem scientists for so long he’d almost forgotten what it was to speak with laymen. The puzzled faces of the Operation Cypher team reminded him that he was there to share his knowledge, not assume they already knew these kinds of things. He slipped into lecture mode easily, having been a teaching assistant for more years and degrees than he cared to recall.

“If the terrorists are smart, and I’m told they are, they’ve done the research and know that Ebola-hybrid gas begins to lose its toxicity at higher temperatures.”

A few unsure nods around the table.

“It’s probably being housed in the morgue in order to keep it refrigerated.”

Now the group was getting it.

SEAL Brown asked, “It’s not a working morgue, though? Wouldn’t the refrigeration or air conditioning have been turned off years ago?”

“Good question,” Blair responded, and gestured toward the curling blue prints covering the table. “According to these old plans, the morgue pre-dates air conditioning, so it was the practice of the times to build them below ground in order to be naturally cool.”

“Like my grandmother’s root cellar!”

“Go to the head of the class, SEAL Rafe.”

“Uh. I’m Brown, sir.” He patted his ultra-short afro. “Should be easy to remember.”

“Have you ever actually seen one of these rockets?” Connor cut in.

“No, but I’ve studied them.”

“Studied them. Great. That’s bloody great.” She brushed her bangs back from her forehead in irritation. “How ’bout weapons, Dr. Sandburg. Have you _studied_ them, too?”

“A little. The standard six-week course required to graduate from the Academy.”

“So you’ve never been in a combat situation?”

“Combat? No. Not exactly. Did a stint with Greenpeace when I was younger, though, sir.”

Connor did a double-take at the use of the masculine honorific.

Ellison chuckled.

Blair quickly steered the subject back to his area of expertise. “Do you want me to begin the briefing on diffusing and detoxification?”

“Thank you, Dr. Sandburg, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Commander Connor, Megan…” That got her attention. “These are very complicated devices.”

“I know they are, Blair.” Score one for Connor with the first-name thing. “That’s why you’re going with us.”

“I’m… going with you?” Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard Naomi’s voice whispering, “Be careful what you wish for”.

Connor turned to one of her SEALs. “Brian, get him some gear, please.”

No hint of a smile now as Ellison’s gaze of disbelief swung from Connor to Blair. “Wait just a minute. This little neo-hippie witch doctor punk is going to deal with the poison? He’s going to get us all killed!”

“Well, James.” Blair’d almost forgotten Brackett was still in the room. “You’ll just have to see that he doesn’t, right?”

 

 

**Chapter 16. Hear No Evil**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 12:30 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 3:30 pm**

**Time Remaining: 19.5 hours**

 

Blair Sandburg burst into the command centre bathroom and lunged for a stall. He barely made it to the toilet before puking copiously, noisily.

Brown stood at a urinal along one wall. “Nice to see you, too.”

Beverley Sanchez entered the men’s room as if she were walking into a ballroom. She found Blair at the sink, pale and shaking. “You look like shit,” she pronounced.

Blair leaned forward. “Thank you.” He spit into the sink before adding, “sir,” and accepted the paper towels Brown was holding out to him.

Sanchez laughed, and reached forward to pull his long curls out of his face in a strangely motherly fashion.

“That’s twice you’ve called women in authority ‘sir’. You don’t look like your typical male chauvinist pig.”

“Nah. I’m not.” Blair leaned back against the wall, breathing deeply. “I’m a feminist, actually.”

“Oh, I gotta hear this,” Brown commented. “I didn’t know guys could be feminists. Please don’t tell my wife.”

“I only call a woman by a masculine term…” Blair leaned over and rinsed his mouth out with tap water. “…when I want to insult her or obliquely suggest that she’s behaving in a manner that’s unecessarily aggressive for the situation. And I mean regardless of the gender of the... aggressor.”

Brown laughed and exited the men’s room, waving at the others over his shoulder.

Sanchez continued, changing her tack now that they were alone. “You’re not wimping out on us, Blair.” It was a statement, not a question.

Having mostly recovered from his momentary panic attack, Blair faced Sanchez squarely. She might be the terror of the FBI, but he was a man who regularly faced a far more frightening enemy in terms of killer microbes, deadly bacteria and invasive viruses.

“You know, Sanchez, I joined the FBI. I went through the Academy. I graduated with honours. I asked for field work. But they said, ‘Blair, you’re too smart for field work.’ Every year I put in for a transfer and every year I sit in that Goddamn lab like the fucking Maytag Repairman. Then the call finally comes, and it’s a whole fucking city at stake? Jesus H. Christ in a handbasket! Couldn’t I have started out on a slightly lesser scale? Save a small village first, then maybe a town? Worked my way up to the whole of the entire of Goddamn Cascade!”

“Field work isn’t everything, Blair, believe you me.” She gazed into the mirror, massaging her temples and smiling weakly at him. “The work you and your team are doing with poisons and chemicals isn’t a cakewalk. Give yourself some credit.”

Blair splashed cold water on his face one more time, surprised at her sudden burst of supportiveness. She, too, must have friends and family in Cascade.

“I’ve got some bad news and some really bad news,” he began. “Maybe the bad news isn’t bad, maybe actually it’s good…”

“You’re babbling. Spit it out.”

“The only close family I have is my mother.”

“What’s the really bad news?”

“She’s in town for the weekend. She knows where I am and she’s having dinner with Sid Graham this evening.”

Sanchez may not have known who Alchimadus, Thomas à Becket, or Solzhenitsyn were, but she’d sure as hell heard of Sid Graham. “The publishing guy who turns everything into a media circus? The guy who leaked the whole Area 51 thing?”

“The very same,” Blair answered, tossing the crumpled paper towels into the trash.

“Oh, shit.” Now it was her turn to look like she’d just lost her lunch. “We’d better alert Brackett.”

 ~~~

A few moments later they burst into the briefing room. Sanchez, eyes flashing and a rather large vein in her forehead throbbing unattractively, was followed by a pale but quickly recovering Blair Sandburg.

“I see,” Brackett affirmed after they’d laid out the details for him. Turning to his hovering agents, he said, “Agent Aldo. Agent Wu. We need you to go over to Sandburg’s apartment and bring _his mother_ to this facility, please!”

“No. No, sir. Don’t bring her here. Please just get her out of town.” Blair was unconvinced their temporary headquarters were anywhere near far enough away from potential ground zero. After all, Ebola-hybrid gas had never been tested under circumstances even resembling dropping it on a major urban centre.

“No. No, Blair. I think it would be better for everybody if we kept her here. Away from Sid Graham, for one thing. And where we can keep an eye on her. After all, we need you to focus totally on the operation at hand.”

A cold frisson crawled down Blair’s spine at Brackett’s warm smile. No way he could back out now, not that he’d needed the manipulative motivation anyway. He felt that strange kinship with Ellison again.

 

 

 

**Chapter 17. Warriors**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 12:30 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 3:30 pm**

**Time Remaining: 19.5 hours**

 

Inside the infirmary command centre Oliver sat at the beat-up old desk, nerves ready to snap as he waiting anxiously for the phone to ring. It startled him badly when it finally did, so he let it ring a couple of times, both to calm himself and to make the people on the other end of the line sweat. He’d been a soldier for far too many years. He knew how to handle a tough situation. Even one of his own making.

Finally he answered, “Oliver here”.

“Hello, General. This is Security Advisor Jack Kelso. I’m in the Pentagon with General Taggart and Chief of Staff Simon Banks.”

“Hi, Norm.” Taggart sounded tense. Oliver could almost hear the other man sweating. “We’re having some problems with the account transfer.”

“Don’t tell me your problems, man. Tell me your solutions.” He’d repeated this slogan thousands of times: to his men, to his family, to his friends. It would probably end up engraved on his tombstone, although he’d never join his fallen comrades in Arlington after this little performance.

“We’ve spoken to the President,” Taggart continued. “He’s not too happy about this.”

“He’d better give me a Goddamn assurance. ” Oliver stood and paced his command centre.

“The only thing the President will give you is a fair trial after you’re caught, _General.”_ Somehow Banks made the time-honoured title sound like an insult. Oliver flinched.

“That you, Banks? What exactly do you do at the White House? Answer the Presidential phone?” Oliver knew he was losing control. The conversation was deteriorating, along with his hold on the situation. Believing the best defence to be a good offence, he continued the insults. “Wash the Presidential limousine? Are you his golf caddy , Banks?”

“Now you give me some Goddamn respect, General…”

“You want respect, you secretary? You coffee server? Let’s talk about George Sarris.”

“Who’s George Sarris, Norman?” Taggart’s calm voice came on the line.

“A career Marine tortured and murdered by a communist death squad in the Peruvian jungle. His wife and young daughter were told by the Pentagon that he went AWOL. Let’s talk about the respect he got.”

“This is getting us nowhere, General.” Twenty-odd years as the Pentagon’s voice of reason had gone a long way toward making Jack Kelso a man trusted by all sides.

“Then let me tell you how it is. The most lethal poison gas known to man being dumped on downtown Cascade. You have less than 24 hours to deliver the money or you’ll be responsible for the loss of thousands of innocent lives. This is war, gentlemen.”

Oliver terminated the call he’d waited so anxiously for, having accomplished nothing. He’d won neither the battle nor the war.

 ~~~

At the Pentagon Kelso stared at the phone, then at the other men around the table. “What’s the word from Mojave?”

“Finkelman can give us no definite assurance on the willy petercapability.”

The men stared grimly at each other.

“I think it’s time to greenlight the SEAL incursion. Are we all in agreement, then?” Kelso went ’round the table, noting each man’s affirmation for the official record, although it was likely the only people who would ever see the minutes of this highly confidential meeting would be the historians of future generations. To today’s world, Operation Cypher didn’t exist.

General Taggart was not a man afraid of making the tough decisions, but he dearly wanted to make the best choice. Sighing heavily, he picked up the phone and was immediately connected to the FBI’s temporary command centre on Rainier Bay.

“Let me speak with Special Agent in Charge Brackett. It’s the Pentagon calling.”

 

  
**Chapter 18. The Rig**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 1:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 4:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 19 hours**

 

The rented warehouse had once been a bustling operation, with a locker and shower area for its workers. This now served as the staging area where the incursion team prepared themselves for their grim mission.

In an awkward dance, Blair and Ellison helped yank and zip and otherwise encase each other in the necessary dry suits. Blair found that donning a dry suit was a lot tougher than a bio-chem ensemble. The skin-tight neoprene was much more form fitting than the baggy vulcanized rubber, Teflon and Kevlar suits he and Sam had worn to dismantle the terrorist Kewpie doll.

Connor and the three other SEALs were far more proficient at dressing themselves in the underwater gear.

“Ow. Ow. Watch the hair,” Blair bitched.

“Hold still, Sandburg. And hold that Goddamn ponytail out of the way.”

“It’s not the hair on my head you’re yanking out in handfuls! Ow!”

Pendergrast cut in helpfully, probably to put a stop to Blair and Ellison’s griping. “Dry suits work by trapping air between the body and the waterproof outer shell. This air is warmed by your body, providing insulation from the cold.”

“Thanks,” Blair answered, a little embarrassed that he’d made a fuss about losing a little chest hair. “I’ve only ever gone diving in warm water before. On digs in South America, mostly.”

He checked his instruments and gauges, glad he’d obtained his SCUBA certification for a watery dig he’d been on back when he thought he might like a career as an anthropologist. He wondered where Ellison had learned to dive, as he too was checking his instrumentation with some familiarity. Blair chuckled at Ellison’s mumbled comments about fancy new-fangled technology. It was all a little more advanced than he understood as well. He was relieved when Pendergrast gave both their gear a quick once-over.

“Listen up, men.” Connor said at last. “Mr. Ellison, you’ll run point for us. Lieutenant Pendergrast will be your dive buddy. Your partner. Attached to your hip. Ellison, you breathe, he breathes with you. Understood?”

Blair figured Lieutenant Pendergrast was a good choice to partner with Ellison. He was older than Rafe and Brown, and Connor too, for that matter. He was lanky, laconic, and gave the impression that he knew what he was doing. And that he’d keep his head in a crisis.

Picking up a clipboard, Conner ran through a checklist, asking about the status of certain gear, muttering in approval. “Brown?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Blair’s nerves were stretched taut as piano wire, but he managed not to giggle at the site of the otherwise impressive SEAL Brown snapping to attention in body-hugging neoprene, flippers under one arm as he saluted with the other. Blair caught Ellison’s eye and saw the sparkle of humour there.

“What’s the status on the special operational gear for Ellison?” Connor demanded.

One after the other, Brown handed her three items, which she carefully inspected. “One aluminum fork, one set of waterproof earplugs, and one quart of motor oil in a squeeze tube. Check.”

“Motor oil?” Blair muttered to Rafe, who was slipping a dangerous-looking dive knife into its sheath with practised ease. “I don’t remember any mention of motor oil at the Academy.”

Rafe shrugged and reached for another menacing knife, this one for the sheath secreted somewhere along his calf.

“For cottonmouth,” Ellison explained. Blair and the SEALs exchanged looks. Blair wasn’t wondering what the items were for so much as he was questioning the man’s sanity. He’d been in solitary an awfully long time…

“Right,” Commander Connor said, putting the clipboard on the bench next to her flippers. “Blair here’s our bio-chem specialist. It’s our job to get him to the morgue area of Triple-C and provide him with cover while he neutralizes the chemical threat.” She peered into the chamber of a gun, which she placed in an airtight bag and attached to her utility belt by its Velcro’d flap. “If he does his job right…”

Blair chose to believe she didn’t mean for it to sound like she lacked of confidence in him.

“We’ll launch green flares and hold our position till the cavalry comes. Make no mistake about it, gentlemen: we’re going in against an entrenched force led by one hot-shit field commander. We’re in for the fight of our lives. I bullshit you not. Any questions?” Her eyes travelled from man to man, holding each gaze a moment before continuing. “Good. Let’s move out.”

Each member of the incursion team wore a mere 10 pounds of gear, including clothing to change into upon landing plus enough field rations for three days. When Blair had queried this, he’d been informed that it was contingency planning in case the operation took longer than anticipated. Blair figured “anticipated” was the military’s word for “hoped”. He didn’t bother to point out that three days took them well past Oliver’s threatened deadline.

Carrying their tanks and flippers, the Operation Cypher team moved across the staging area to a Sea Stallion helicopter and two Huey Cobra attack ’copters, their blades already whipping with ferocity.

Pendergrast stood in the chopper’s doorway, another checklist in hand as each of the SEALs boarded. “You’re over there,” he shouted above the sound of the blades, directing Blair and Ellison to two remaining seats in the rear. “Follow me.” Or at least that’s what Blair thought he’d said.

Ellison nodded and stepped back in order for Sandburg to climb in first. He must have been lip reading, because he had his hands plastered over his ears as if the noise were causing him physical pain. That’s some sensitive hearing, Blair mused, having seen the convict insert the earplugs after the briefing.

Blair put a hand on Ellison’s shoulder and mouthed, “You okay?” Ellison nodded. Reassured, Blair climbed in. Ellison hauled himself up and into the seat next to Blair. Pendergrast jumped in across from them, slamming the door shut on his way in.

The ground crew waved red light sabres indicating “all clear”. The three choppers lifted off, flying out across the water in shadowy formation.

Blair stared out the window, every now and then glancing at the other members of his team. He saw nothing but grim, determined faces. Not a word was spoken. His mind wandered, as it did when he was stressed. He marvelled over the events of the last… how many hours had it been? And how had this come to pass? Here he was, an FBI lab rat, suddenly teamed with a bunch of tough-as-nails career naval personnel. He’d asked for field work, thinking about forensics-type activities. He realized now his visions of “field work” had been defined by the field work he’d done as an anthro major. Now he was on a field mission to save his home city from terrorists.

To make matters even more surreal, he seemed to have been appointed babysitter to this ex-con who’d committed who-knows-what atrocity to land himself in clandestine solitary confinement for 13 years. Hell, his very existence had been erased from the most confidential of records. Blair felt suddenly very tired, despite the incredible levels of adrenaline flowing through his body.

Connor’s tinny voice squawked over Lieutenant Pendergrast’s walkie-talkie, ordering, “Activate mini-cams”.

The walkie-talkies were totally unnecessary, given that she was sitting right in the next row of seats. Blair figured she was just doing yet another sound check: actual usage versus the annoying “check-check-check”.

Each SEAL flipped on a tiny video camera mounted on his or her shoulder. Although he wondered, Blair was too overwhelmed to ask why he and Ellison didn’t each have one as well.

Then a naval medic appeared from the belly of the bird and distributed small neoprene sheaths hanging from Velcro straps. The medic explained slowly and loudly, “In this sheath is a syringe. The syringe contains atropine. If you have any contact with the gas, and I do mean _any_ , use it if you want to live.”

Each SEAL took one and strapped it to an ankle. Blair shook his head, declining.

“Uh-uh. I _hate_ needles.”

“Can I have his, then?” Ellison asked. “Well, it’s not like he’s going to use it.”

 

  
**Chapter 19. Night Train**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 2:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 5:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 18 hours**

 

A couple of techs chuckled at Ellison’s last comment, every word being beamed back to the warehouse at this point. Shortly, the Operation Cypher team would be too far out of range for the command centre to eavesdrop. They did have tac radios with greater range, but if the FBI equipment back in Cascade could pick it up, so too could Oliver’s soldiers. As much as possible, they’d communicate only by the shoulder cams. All information would be sent as grainy, black-and-white images.

Across one side of the room, FBI technicians spoke into headsets and surveyed a bank of monitors displaying a continual flux of data: satellite pictures, thermographic images, a computer bio of Oliver, intel on the weather, and any other factors that could affect their operation.

Sanchez sat at the control panel wearing a headset. Brackett paced behind her.

“Mini-cams operational,” she informed her boss.

 ~~~

Outside the warehouse an FBI sedan pulled up and parked. FBI agent Elaine Walters climbed out. Naomi Sandburg sat in the back seat.

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Can’t do that, ma’am. Sorry.” She extended a helping hand toward Naomi. “But maybe there’s somebody inside who can.” She smiled reassuringly.

Naomi accepted the help and climbed out of the sedan gracefully. “Motherfucking pigs,” she muttered.

“What was that, Ms. Sandburg?”

“Nothing.” She strode toward the unmarked steel door, determined to get answers.

Agent Walters was hard pressed to keep up.

 ~~~

The choppers flew low and slow, circling around Storm Island to land on Triple-C from the ocean side. Only a short distance from the point of takeoff, the running lights blinked off, the chopper pilots switching to night vision goggles. Their greatest danger at this point was crashing into each other or some other low-flying aircraft.

In the hold of the Sea Stallion, the SEALs began to prepare themselves for their watery descent. They rechecked their weapons, dry suits, closed-circuit cameras and SCUBA tanks.

“You know what you’re doing?” Connor asked Blair, not unkindly.

He nodded shakily, smiling a little to hide his nervousness.

She asked the same question to Ellison, who merely nodded, face a mask of inscrutability.

Blair had been more than a little worried about Ellison’s proficiency. He was reassured when Ellison scrutinized the equipment, competently adjusting his depth and oxygen gauges.

The Sea Stallion lagged behind the Hueys. It hovered about 50 feet above the water’s surface, then bore inexorably down on Triple-C. It banked to the right, descending lower, below radar.

The Sea Stallion pilot turned to Connor, shouting over the chopper noise: “I got you to the strongest current in Rainier Bay, ma’am. You’re on your own from here.”

“Prepare to disembark, mates!”

Having donned tanks and flippers a few minutes earlier, the SEALs now stood. They all checked the gear of the person in front of them. Straps were tightened, weapons checked. In the rear of the hold, the SEALs readied a pair of high-tech submersibles.

Ellison was ready to go, calm and steady, eyes forward. Blair was still behind. He had his SCUBA tanks shouldered, but he couldn’t get the first of the tricky catches on the shoulder harness secured.

Ellison reached over and secured the catch with a metallic clink. Blair, embarrassed, nodded his thanks.

At the back of the hold Pendergrast directed Ellison to sit astride the SEAL sub, behind Rafe, who’d be driving.

Ellison did so. Pendergrast then sat behind Ellison. Henry Brown buckled Pendergrast and Ellison in with harnesses that functioned as the sub’s version of seatbelts.

The Sea Stallion hovered 15 feet from the surface. The belly door opened. Connor leaned out, inspected the drop area. She hand-signalled to Brown, who was readying the other sub. Blair clambered onto the second sub behind Connor, who would be driving. Brown began buckling in Blair.

“Wait a minute.” Blair put his hands on the buckle, preventing it from clicking into place.

Brown ceased his efforts and looked at Sandburg expectantly.

“What if this thing crashes?”

Brown and Rafe broke out laughing. This remark was obviously very funny to them. Even Connor smiled, her face a pale moon encircled in black neoprene just before she dropped her mask into place.

Brown finished buckling everyone in.

“Smile, Blair. Live a little,” Brown said encouragingly. “Life’s too short.”

“Especially yours,” Ellison added, sliding his mask over his face.

The mouthpieces prevented any further comments. Blair was very glad of that.

The mini-subs were released. They rolled out of the Sea Stallion on a set of tracks and splashed down into the bay. Only once they were under the surface and the Stallion had pulled noisily away did they risk turning on the xenon headlamps. A pair of techno sea serpents, they skimmed through the murky depths towards the abandoned prison turned terrorist headquarters.

 ~~~

In the Storm Island watchtower, General Oliver and Major Zeller watched from the window. The military had always been known for its “hurry-up-and-wait” practices, and this renegade operation was no exception.

Suddenly the walkie-talkies squawked into life and Captain Sarris’s pleasant voice declared, “Something on radar, sir. Two Hueys in standard formation, due east and approaching.”

Oliver raised his night-vision binoculars, scanning the bay.

“I see two birds, Captain, flying low, heading toward the back of the island.”

“You think it’s a decoy for something else?” Zeller was a hell of a strategist.

Oliver lowered the binoculars, clicked on his walkie-talkie. “Sergeant? Take Quinn and Chapel and head over to the west end of the island on the double. I think we have visitors.”

 ~~~

Oliver’s soldiers had been patrolling the perimeter when the call came in. They’d reached the old watertower, empty now except for a few inches of stagnant rainwater. Private Quinn had remarked earlier on what a great place it would be to dump a body. Sergeant Bruenell had left at that point to patrol elsewhere. Alone.

Quinn clicked off his walkie-talkie and turned to Private Chapel. “You heard the man, Warren. Let’s move it!” Quinn loved to give orders, and, as a private, passing on the orders of others was his one and only chance.

 ~~~

Vision underwater was limited. The only illumination was from the running lights of the subs, which had been dimmed to a dull fluorescent green. Blair dearly hoped that Rafe, whose sub was in the lead, knew what he was doing.

As they drew close to the island, Connor pulled her sub ahead. Switching on an underwater spotlight, she scanned the wall of rocks before them. After a few moments the light fell on a large water-intake pipe that jutted out from the island’s bedrock. The pipe was exactly where Ellison had said it would be. It was roughly seven feet in diameter, covered by a grate thick with rust, barnacles and seaweed. Near the bottom was a small, jagged hole, presumably the one through which Ellison had escaped five years earlier.

The two pilots brought the subs closer still. At Connor’s gesture the passengers disembarked and the SEALs secured the subs to the grate. Prior briefing had explained this was so the Navy could retrieve their expensive equipment after the mission was successfully completed and the Operation Cypher team had been evacuated by helicopter. Pendergrast had told them later in the ready area that it would also make a getaway possible for any survivors if they had to abort the mission.

“Survivors. Great.”

Blair had marvelled at how casual the man had sounded at the prospect of death for himself or his teammates.

Blair shivered, his neoprene second skin not keeping him as warm as he’d hoped. He wondered, not for the first time since joining the FBI, why he hadn’t simply chosen to make his career in the relative safety of academia— “relatively”, since there had been that devastating incident with the psycho test subject and the fountain back when he was still an anthro major. He shook himself internally and deliberately cleared his mind of any recollections of water-based disasters. Focus on the job at hand, he told himself sternly.

The SEALs directed their green fluorescent spotlights inside the hole in the grate. Commander Connor signalled to Ellison with a sweeping “lead-the-way” motion. Bubbles streamed out of Ellison’s gear, meaning his next breath would be deep one. Last time he’d been in this pipe, he hadn’t had any SCUBA equipment. Just his own lung capacity. Or maybe some jury-rigged device with a few more moments of air. Blair’s mind reeled at the thought.

Ellison entered the pipe. It was a tight squeeze for a large man with air tanks, but a helpful hand from Pendergrast and Brown edged the grate out just far enough that Ellison slipped through like a neoprene otter. One by one, the others follow him in.

 ~~~

The field radio squawked to life. “Quinn reporting, General. We’re on the shoreline near the old power plant. We’ve completed our sweep of the area. It’s an ‘all clear’, sir.”

“All clear here as well, sir,” Bruenell informed his superiors.

“All clear on the radar, as well,” Veronica Sarris confirmed from the other side of the infirmary command centre.

Zeller turned to Oliver. “There’s nothing out there, sir.”

“Tell the men to stay put,” Oliver ordered.

 

 

**Chapter 20. Breaking Ground**

**Location: Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 5:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 8:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 15 hours**

 

The Operation Cypher team swam warily through the snaking intake pipe, helmet lights barely illuminating the murky darkness. Following Rafe’s example, Blair kept one gloved hand on the curving wall to avoid swimming into it. It was hard to distinguish open water, such as it was, from the slimy, barnacle-encrusted concrete pipe though which they swam.

They surfaced in the middle of a large subterranean room via an old cistern. The cistern was ancient, dating back to the days when such things were constructed of wood. Some of the wooden slats that edged it crumbled under the weight of the divers as they climbed awkwardly out. The anthropologist in Blair wanted to stop and examine it, but the FBI field agent soldiered on instead.

The team consulted their schematics, which were a composite of the satellite photos, old architectural drawings and Ellison’s rough maps made from memory. So far the maps were accurate, confirming they’d entered at the correct point. Ellison had said he’d exited though a room directly under the island’s power plant. It was obvious from the sound of turbines and steam that that was indeed where they had landed.

A swift reconnaissance confirmed Ellison’s prior intelligence that the room possessed only one method of access other than the cistern. Ellison, though, seemed as surprised as the rest of the team to find a modern steel door in one wall.

“Door’s new,” was all he said, although he had to raise his voice to be heard above the shriek of the giant steam turbine that formed part of the wall along one side of the room.

Brown tried the door, yanking with all his strength, then Rafe added his muscle, but to no avail. It was solid and it was locked.

“Thank you very bloody much, Ellison. You’ve led us to a room with no exit!”

Apparently Commander Connor was not fond of obstacles in her path.

“This is a huge improvement.” He grinned at Connor, who merely rolled her eyes. “This was a blank wall last time I was here.”

“How the hell did you get in or out if there was no doorway here before?”

Ellison ignored her as he moved to the newly installed door and began to examine it carefully. “Lock’s on the other side.”

“Blow it or burn it, Skipper?” Rafe asked, ready to take on the steel door.

“No time for the torch. And explosives’ll bring the terrorists and probably the entire building down on us.” She turned to Ellison. “An idea, please. We’re tight on time here.”

“You could just wait for me to unlock the door,” Ellison said coolly.

“And you’re going to accomplish that how, exactly?”

“Through there,” he responded, pointing to the giant sweeping blades housed in one wall. They were reminiscent of the screws that drove the Titanic, but many sets of blades deeper, turning ceaselessly, rhythmically, lethally.

Blair peered into the shadowed alcove. It was like a really big fireplace with blades sweeping past instead of a cozy fire, steam standing in for smoke. It was impossible to see how many sets of blades there were, or what was on the other side. Could be another room, could be a dead end. A deadly end for Ellison, if that was the case.

“Can we stop it?” Connor asked.

Blair thought hard, recalling everything he’d read or heard about Triple-C and Storm Island. He remembered some stuff from the tour he’d taken a couple of years back, plus he’d practically inhaled a stack of briefing documents over the past 18 hours or so. According to the notes he’d read, the old steam engine had been found to be efficient, dependable and economical. Washington State had no lack of wood as a burnable fuel source. So the old steam-driven turbines had been repaired and updated many times over the years.

Blair took a step closer, looking and listening to the grinding of machinery dating back to an earlier time. The drawings showed that the massive engine was actually housed in the power plant above them. The giant propeller-like blades were so huge that they descended into the room below, the room from which the team was currently trying to escape. To Blair it looked like the entire power plant had, in fact, been built around the huge steam engine many, many years ago.

The deadly swinging blades actually formed one portion of the wall of the room, left accessible, no doubt, for repair and maintenance.

“No need,” Ellison answered finally.

Blair and the SEALs stared in astonishment, gazes swinging from the smug-looking Ellison to the huge blades. At regular intervals, release valves inside the opening emitted piercing bursts of steam, a jarring sound somewhere between a hiss and a scream. Blair noticed that Ellison was still was wearing the earplugs that had been part of his specially requested gear.

Connor shook her head in disbelief. “You’re shitting me, right? You catch one of those steam bursts and you’re a corpse.”

“True.” He unshouldered his equipment and handed it to Blair. “That’s why I memorized their timing.” He began to strip out of his dripping dry suit.

“Now what the bloody hell are you doing?”

“I’m leaving the frog suit here in case I need it later. I suggest you do the same.” He stripped quickly and efficiently, extracting jeans, T-shirt and light jacket from his pack. Steel-toed work boots also made an appearance.

“Well, is everyone just going to watch?” He adjusted a navy blue Jags cap, his eyes looking a challenge from one team member to another.

Flushing slightly, Connor directed her team to change, the dry suits having served their purpose.

The team switched to water-repellent invasion gear and Kevlar, with specially selected waterproof footwear. They’d been forewarned that the caves and tunnels housed millions of bats. In some of the older tunnels, they’d probably end up wading through inches-deep deposits of bat guano. Not very healthy to breathe, long term. Brown had nearly resigned the squad over that, but settled on an Army issue respirator, a miniature version of the helmet attachment Blair and Sam had worn back in the FBI gas chamber.

Unlike the SEALs, however, Blair had chosen to follow Ellison’s example and stuck with regular street clothes: jeans, t‑shirt, flannel over-shirt, steel-toed boots. In deference to their soggy environment, he’d added a waterproof windbreaker— without the letters “FBI” silk-screened on the back. He wasn’t sure why he’d thrown in his lot with the convict rather than the trained Navy personnel. He just figured they were on Ellison’s territory. When in Rome— or in this case, when in a prison— do as the prisoners. He figured Ellison knew a lot more about surviving in this environment than even the best-trained SEALs.

“‘ _Trained seals’, heh,”_ Blair said under his breath, realizing just how that sounded. He actually giggled out loud, eliciting some very strange looks from those around him.

Blair blushed at his mental lapse, admonishing himself that this was, without question, the most serious and important situation he’d ever been in. He looked up and found Ellison grinning back at him. The man made a few silent clapping notions, and winked. Clapping, just like… a trained seal.

Just how loud had he spoken? A glance at the Navy personnel said only Ellison seemed to have heard. Thank God! Blair hardly wanted to offend the people on whom so many lives rested… including his own and his mother’s.

“It’s okay, Chief. Nerves do funny things to a guy.” Handing his jacket and ball cap to Sandburg, Ellison perched on the lip of the opening, adjusting his earplugs. He sat there for several long moments, one hand on the stone arch of the opening, eyes closed. Blair assumed he was feeling the rhythm. It was not unlike a tribe he’d once studied that made their young boys run a gauntlet of sorts when they came of age. Each member of the village was given a long spiked stick that was raised and lowered in accordance with a precise drumbeat. If the boys could keep the rhythm, they’d emerge unscathed. If not, they’d be sorely beaten and have to try again.

There’d be much more dire consequences if Ellison failed this test. The giant rotating blades and the white-hot bursts of steam would rule out any second chances. For Ellison, and perhaps for the mission to save Cascade as well.

Meanwhile, Rafe and Brown continued to assemble the blowtorch as a logical contingency. Stone-cold logic… because if they needed the blowtorch, it could only mean Ellison had failed.

Breaking the tense silence, Pendergrast asked, “Uhh, Commander Connor? You said never leave his side…”

“You’re not required to follow, Lieutenant Pendergrast. This man is probably going to get himself killed.”

“Heard that one a few times before,” Ellison grumbled, just loud enough to be heard between steam blasts.

Ellison took a deep breath and rolled into position right beside the first set of blades, parallel to them. If he screwed up, he’d be sliced in two lengthwise, balls to brain. A burst of steam signalled his start and he rolled between the first and second set of blades. Another steam burst. Another roll. Steam burst. Roll. Steam burst… and he was out of sight.

For long minutes he was gone, obscured by the steam. He could be dead, steamed like a flounder, and they’d never know it. Or he could be through to the other side and taking off, leaving them behind. He could easily forge new and deadly allegiances with the terrorists. After all, he was some sort of criminal, although Blair still didn’t know what he was supposed to have done. Or Ellison could just be getting the hell out of Dodge. Even though he was several years older than he had been when he escaped this rock, he was still in terrific shape. His lean, muscular physique had been clearly showcased only moments ago when they’d all watched him change like some kind of exhibitionist performance artist. Ellison could probably just swim to shore again like he had the last time.

It dawned on him then, with sickening clarity, why Ellison had said the door was good news. If he hadn’t been aware that a doorway had been added, Ellison must have planned to take them into the facility via the turbine route!

Blair considered this a good time to take up praying, and began an extensive search through his mental catalogue for an appropriate god or goddess. What deity looked after fools on doomed missions?

He was so distracted by his inner musings, so overwhelmed by the continual shriek of the steam, that he almost didn’t hear the thump of the door being unbolted.

It creaked open on rusty hinges thirsty for a little WD-40. There stood Ellison, a little damp for his trouble, no doubt a combination of steam overspray and sweat from exertion and the whole nearly-cut-in-two-and-parboiled experience.

Blair just barely refrained from hugging him. He was fairly sure hugging criminals he was assigned to escort on dangerous, desperate missions was not in the official FBI agent guidebook.

“Welcome to Triple-C, gentlemen.” Ellison raised an eyebrow in Connor’s direction. “Ma’am.”

The Operation Cypher team filed through the door and into the waiting tunnel, not without some last narrow-eyed looks at Ellison and the turbine blades. Blair returned Ellison’s ball cap and jacket on the way by. They moved up a steep incline to another locked steel bulkhead. Rafe and Brown checked it out with a little more confidence this time.

“Door’s at least three inches thick, Commander.”

“Bloody hell. Now we _will_ have to burn through it.”

Brown grabbed the acetylene torch again, now completely assembled. Rafe turned on the mini-tanks of compressed gas that comprised the bulk of his gear. The torch sparked, flaming up, white hot. Brown headed toward the bulkhead door with his state-of-the-art equipment. Ellison stepped past him, forcing him to quickly point the flame to one side to avoid burning the other man. “What the…?”

Standing before the door, Ellison considered the lock, then grabbed the aluminum kitchen fork from his pack.

“Now, this door…” He bent the thing into an awkward shape, fished the fork in the lock, twisted it gingerly; one, two, three attempts and… _pop!_ “…was here before.”

He shoved open the thick door and climbed through the bulkhead, carefully pocketing the fork as he went.

“These SEALs are really handy to have around,” Ellison muttered to Blair as the FBI agent scrambled after him.

Behind him, Blair heard Brown asking, “Who _is_ this guy?”

The team stumbled through dim passageways, their helmet lights providing barely enough illumination to see. Ellison, however, appeared to have no trouble with the lack of light. Without even turning on his flashlight, he led the way with sure-footed confidence.

“Hey,” Pendergrast asked after a while, keeping his voice low. “How come I can see down here? There’s no light source.”

“Yeah,” agreed Brown. “These walls are sorta glowing.”

All eyes turned to Ellison. “It’s some kind of mould, I think. I never did find out.”

“Bioluminescence,” Blair volunteered.

“Huh?” was the hissed response from the team in general. Connor held up a hand, stopping them and gathering them in a small knot.

“Explain.”

“Commander? We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?” Pendergrast questioned.

“At this point, any and all information might prove useful.” She nodded toward Blair.

“Bioluminescence,” he repeated. “It’s light produced by tiny living animals so small that you’d need a microscope to see ’em. What appears to your eyes as a steady greenish glow is really the result of thousands of flashes, each generated by a single phytoplankton.”

“It’s an animal?” asked Brown. “Is it, like, a parasite or something?” He shuddered visibly, which meant a truly outstanding shudder for it to be seen in the perpetual gloom.

“Nah,” Blair continued. “They live on phosphorus. It’s food to them. Bioluminescence only occurs in places where there’s brackish water with little movement. These tunnels, both the man-made and solid-rock ones, are perfect for it. It’s usually a water creature, but I guess there’s so much dampness in here that it’s spread up the walls.”

“Hmmm. Lucky for us, then,” Connor said. “Stow your flashlights. Use only your helmet lights. Save batteries as much as you can.” She shoved her own mag light through a loop in her belt. “Let’s move it, men.”

They headed off as rapidly as was advisable under the circumstances, Ellison in the lead.

Eventually they arrived at a series of large concrete drainage pipes, now empty, that siphoned off into another cistern, also concrete. They had apparently reached a slightly more modern section of the prison.

According to their maps, they were now under the main cell house.

Ellison pointed to the inside of the cistern. Even in the dark it showed years of white, crusted watermarks on its darker cement sides, although it was completely dry now. It was big enough for a hunched-up man to scramble though.

“The shower room?” Connor whispered.

Ellison nodded _yes._ “After you.” He gestured grandly.

“No, that’s quite all right; you first. I like to have my charges where I can see them.”

And again Blair and the SEALs clambered after Ellison as he led them toward a faint white light emanating from a drainage grate above. It seemed almost bright compared with the greenish glow of the plankton-encrusted tunnel walls.

Once they’d reached the area directly below the grate, there was room for several people to stand up straight, if they bunched up tightly.

Rafe readied a fibre optic camera, which he slowly, carefully, pushed up through the grate. He turned the device slowly. When he’d done a complete revolution, giving him a transmitted image of a 360-degree radius of the prison shower, he stepped back, letting the next SEAL have a look.

Blair went last, carefully sweeping the camera in a circle as he’d seen the others do. The camera showed him pretty much what he’d expect of a prison shower: a tiled room with showerheads and a 20-foot ceiling. Being a prison, the entire room was ringed by a raised, railed mezzanine where heavily armed Triple-C guards had once stood watch over the inmates showering on the level below.

Commander Connor didn’t take a turn on Rafe’s viewer, instead scrutinizing the shower room images on a tiny wrist-held video monitor, like something out of Dick Tracy.

Guess rank hath not only its privilege, but also its techno-gadgets, Blair thought.

The shower was deserted, and Connor began to give the order to head up and into the shower area when Ellison, peering over her shoulder at the two-inch-by-two-inch camera screen, laid a hand on her shoulder.

Startled, she turned to face him; once he had her attention, he pressed a finger across his lips for silence. Taking the closed-circuit device from Rafe, he brought her attention to a faint beam she’d missed on the black-and-white screen.

Pivoting the camera across the room, they’d almost missed the infrared beam that flared between a transmitter and a receptor right across the grate where they were about to emerge.

Ellison whispered in Connor’s ear, then Blair’s, “Motion sensor.” Connor repeated the message to the other three SEALs.

Connor gingerly lifted the grate. Rafe wiggled his hands past its edges and delicately nudged the beam transmitter and receiver away. It was very delicate work, requiring rock-steady hands and precision movement. Rafe nearly collapsed when it was safely accomplished.

Brown mimed a silent whoop-whoop at him.

Blair forced his heart back into his chest where it usually resided.

 ~~~

In the prison’s old infirmary that was serving as the terrorists’ command centre set, a silent alarm blinked on the panel monitored by Captain Sarris.

“Major Zeller,” she called across the room to her superior officer. “One of the anti-disturbance tremblers has been tripped. In the…” She checked the instruments again. “In the shower. I’m afraid we have visitors.”

Zeller smiled coldly, vindicated now that he’d insisted on more than one kind of surveillance device at each potential point of entry.

“Very good, Captain. Please let the General know.” He began re-checking the armaments.

 ~~~

In the drainage pipe, Commander Connor turned to Lieutenant Pendergrast. “Stand fast. We’ll secure the area. Keep those two here.” Blair had no doubt that by “those two” she meant Ellison and himself.

Rafe handed his viewer to Blair. It was more likely that he wanted it out of harm’s way than that he wanted to keep “those two” in the loop. Still, motivation aside, Blair was glad of the ability to watch what went on above. Ellison came up closer and slung an arm loosely across his shoulders. Pendergrast kept his distance as much as possible in the tight space, keeping his eyes trained on his own closed-circuit display.

The shower room grate popped open. Rafe and Brown, wearing night-vision goggles, emerged, taking defensive positions back to back. Commander Connor followed.

Connor directed Rafe and Brown to the far end of the shower area. They crept across the tiled floor, taking check-and-defend positions behind the shower’s tiled columns. But suddenly, shockingly, floodlights blazed from the mezzanine above.

The team yanked off their goggles, temporarily blinded by the unexpected illumination.

In the cistern, below, Pendergrast and Blair squinted into the suddenly bright display. Ellison fell back against the wall, arm thrown across his eyes. Blair didn’t know what to make of that, but laid a comforting hand on the man’s bicep, waiting for the dancing black spots to disappear from his own vision.

 ~~~

At the FBI’s command centre in the warehouse Sanchez, too, was momentarily blinded when the flash lit up the video monitor she’d been watching. She regained composure quickly and jumped her viewpoint from one SEAL’s shoulder camera to the next, only to find Connor, Rafe and Brown caught like so many deer in terrorist headlights. Pendergrast had remained down in the drainpipe with Ellison and Sandburg.

Brackett, who had been standing at her shoulder, barked, “What’s that? What the hell was that?”

Sanchez returned the monitor to Connor’s viewpoint, rubbed her eyes and hoped Brackett’s question had been rhetorical, because, quite frankly, she hadn’t a clue.

 ~~~

As the bright lights flashed on in the drainage tunnel opening over their heads, Blair also asked what was going on, receiving only a softly snapped “don’t know” from Lieutenant Pendergrast.

Blair and Ellison exchanged looks, Ellison having recovered his composure. This time it was Ellison who now reached out and placed a steadying hand on Blair’s shoulder. For once Blair didn’t care what awful crime Ellison was supposed to have committed. He leaned into the comforting touch and waited.

“Drop your weapons!”

The command boomed out from the mezzanine above the SEALs’ heads. The barren shower and unforgiving tiles bounced the sound around the room, its natural acoustics lending an otherworldly effect. As if it all weren’t scary enough, thought Blair.

Blair, watching the monitor, saw the SEALs whirl around, startled, squinting into the blinding whiteness of the floodlights, weapons at the ready.

At one end of the room, Rafe and Brown stood together, clutching their guns tightly. Taking cover behind one of the tiled columns, they stood back to back, aiming at the catwalk above them, squinting into the white light, unable to see the enemy.

“Commander Connor here, General Oliver. U.S. Navy SEALs.”

Oliver’s voice thundered down at them.

“Commander Connor, if you have any concern for the lives of your people, you will order them to safety their weapons and place them on the floor at their feet.”

 

 

**Chapter 21. Sleeping Beauty**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 7:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 10:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 13 hours**

 

At the FBI command centre, Sanchez watched with dread as the two teams of soldiers came face to face. Despite the jumpy black-and-white pictures being beamed back to her monitor, it was clear that the renegades had all the advantages.

“Oh, Christ. This isn’t happening.”

Brackett pulled a chair up next to her monitor and they conferred quietly, anxiously. They both started at the sound of General Oliver’s voice. They were doubly startled because the shoulder-mounted video cameras did not have audio capacity. The equipment had traded off sound for miniaturization. One of the team must have had the presence of mind to depress the “send” switch on the radio transmitter attached to each utility belt.

 ~~~

Oliver looked down at the SEALs. Zeller stood next to him. The other renegades assumed positions around the mezzanine perimeter, M-16s trained and ready.

As planned, the bright lights prevented the invading team from seeing the exact positions of Oliver and his men. And what they couldn’t see, they couldn’t shoot.

Speaking in the direction Oliver’s voice had last been heard, Connor called out, “Sir. We know why you’re out here. God knows I agree with you, but like you, sir, I swore to defend this country against all enemies. Foreign, sir, and domestic.”

Over on his left flank, Oliver heard Bruenell draw in a sharp hiss of breath. “She’s a bloody Aussie,” Bruenell exclaimed. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Further along the balcony, Zeller answered, “One might very vell ask ze same uv you und uv me, ass vell.” His accent was much thicker than usual.

“I worked damn hard to obtain my U.S. citizenship, thank you very much. Not that I’ll be needing it ever again.” Bruenell was pouring on his own Australian accent in counterpoint to Zeller’s Austrian inflection.

“You got zat right, ” Zeller responded.

Not taking his eyes off the tableau in the shower room below, Oliver ordered his men to be quiet. Nerves were taut and everyone on edge.

“Commander Connor. I say again. Order your team to drop their weapons.”

“General,” she called. “We’ve spilled the same blood, you and I, in the same mud. You know Goddamn well that I cannot give that order.”

Behind a column that barely concealed them, two other SEALs squinted into the floodlights.

The next time the general spoke, his voice was from a different point on the mezzanine. “Your unit is covered from an elevated position. Don’t sentence your men to die, Commander. Enough have died already. So I say for the third and final time, tell them to lay down their weapons. I’m not going to ask again.”

Zeller, Kincaid, Bruenell, and Quinn were spread out along the mezzanine. Only Chapel and Sarris were absent, having been ordered to remain at the command centre and monitor the instruments. Although he doubted it very much, Oliver knew it was still possible for a second incursion team to be circulating through the island. He hadn’t made general by being careless.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Commander. No one has to die here.”

“You men following the general,” Connor called out. “You are United States Marines and under oath. Have you forgotten that? We all have shipmates we remember. And yeah, some of ’em were maybe shit on and spit on by the Pentagon, but that doesn’t give you the right to mutiny here. Or the right to take lives of people on the same side.”

“That’s a nice speech, Commander.” Oliver, now at yet another point on the balcony, hawked and spit over the railing. He deliberately missed hitting Connor, but aimed near enough to make his point. “I heard plenty like it in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. They all added up to zero. From hero to zero. That’s what far too many got. Pretty words aren’t gonna get you out of this, Commander. Now abort this mission. Goddamn it, abort!”

Oliver moved to another position along the mezzanine. Moving out of his commanding officer’s way, Private Quinn’s boot accidentally nudged a loose tile. It fell to the floor below with a small crack as it shattered.

One of the SEALs who’d taken cover behind a column reacted to the sound. He brought up his machine gun and fired a sustained burst in its direction, and all hell broke loose. The Marines fired in unison, a merciless barrage.

The SEALs behind the pillar took the brunt of it. They gamely returned fire, but the lights and the height disadvantage were against them.

 ~~~

In the drainage hole, Blair, Ellison, and Pendergrast listened in utter dismay to the firefight above. Cycling quickly through the grainy images, Blair watched as first one, then the second, then all three shoulder cams broadcast still pictures of floor tiles.

“They’re all down,” Pendergrast muttered, looking shocked. Ellison reached for him, but the SEAL suddenly turned and scrambled up the ladder. Blair grabbed him, trying to pull him back down.

“Don’ t do it!” Blair hissed.

“Let go of me.” Despite the confined space, Pendergrast kicked off Blair’s grip and climbed the ladder toward his compatriots. “Traitor!” he screamed.

Inferring the action from the sounds, Blair heard as Pendergrast climbed out of the drainage pipe and came up firing. He must have been shot almost instantly. He fell backward into the drainage hole face first, his boots caught in the rebar loops that formed the ladder up the side. There he hung, suspended, his face right in Blair’s face. He gasped once and his eyes slid drunkenly closed.

Blair stood frozen, but Ellison reached past him and dragged the body back down into their relative safety.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Oliver’s voice echoed chillingly in the shower room above.

The gunfire ceased, leaving Blair’s ears ringing in the sudden silence.

“Look.” Ellison grabbed Blair’s shoulder and forced him to look where he pointed at a bit of red on the lifeless Pendergrast’s neck. The shooter had managed to hit the small opening between helmet and Kevlar vest. Focussing on the unfortunate SEAL, Blair was astonished to see not blood, but the red fletching of a tiny tranquilizer dart.

Pendergrast was unconscious, not dead.

“Didn’t sound like bullets,” Ellison commented. “At least not all of it.”

Ellison ripped the tac radio from Pendergrast’s helmet and began appropriating weapons: a nine-millimetre pistol and machine gun, plus a saw-toothed knife and sheath. Having stripped their fallen comrade, Ellison headed back down the tunnel, away from the shower area.

Blair, indecisive at first, clambered after Ellison. Better the devil you know…

 ~~~

On Sanchez’ monitor, the images transmitted from the SEALs’ video cameras were stationery.

Sanchez, Brackett and the other agents back at the FBI warehouse could only conclude they were dead. The image from Connor’s camera showed Rafe and Brown sprawled across the old shower room floor.

“It’s over.” Sanchez rubbed her eyes tiredly. “We’d better check the status of the willy peteroperation.”

At another monitor, the one watching the GPS devices, an FBI technician shouted excitedly, “Wait! We’ve still got movement. Numbers five and six. That’s Sandburg and… Ellison.”

“If Ellison’s still alive, it’s not over,” Brackett pronounced ominously, not sounding all that glad.

 ~~~

Naomi Sandburg had never been one to wait patiently or do what she’d been told. Feeling she’d been left out of the loop quite long enough, she abandoned her assigned corner and headed toward the clutch of excited agents. She peered through a crowd of techs huddled around video and audio monitors. She froze, her hands covering her mouth at the sound of Blair’s voice over the tac radio: “God. Jesus. We’re gonna die.”

“My baby!” Naomi shrieked as she was led away by gentle but insistent agents.

 ~~~

Sanchez, agitated, exited the command centre with Brackett. They huddled, speaking in hushed voices.

Sanchez hissed, “You told me I’m on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Well, Goddamn it, I need to know! Who the fuck is this Jim Ellison character? Start talking, Lee, or I swear I will go to the press. Or let Sandburg’s mother do it for me!”

Brackett stared at Sanchez angrily. “No. You don’t need to know. And you will not be going to the press.”

Now it was Sanchez’ turn to stare. She crossed her arms, radiating defiance.

Eventually Brackett relented. “I will tell you this, though.” He scrubbed one hand over his tired face. “I told you before, back at Ventriss Prison, that Jim Ellison was an Army Ranger. He’s a trained killer. He was one of Black Ops’ best operatives. Ever.”

A tense pause, during which Sanchez did what she did best: intimidated her prey.

It must have worked, as eventually Brackett sighed and surrendered.

“On March 14, 1988, Captain James Ellison and his eight-member Anti-Insurgence team was sent into Peru. They never made it. Their Huey crashed at the landing site, shot down or pilot error. We never found out.”

Beverly uncrossed her arms and nodded, willing the man to continue his narrative.

“The whole team was reported MIA and presumed dead.”

“But…” she prompted.

“But,” he agreed. “Not only was Ellison the sole survivor, he also successfully completed his mission single handed. He contacted the local tribes and organized a militia. Together, Ellison and the locals held the Chopec Pass for 18 months. Nobody got in or out as long as Ellison and his irregulars were on duty.

“Jim Ellison was… _is_ ,” he corrected himself, _“_ one of the most dangerous men on earth. And right now, we _think_ he’s on our side.”

 ~~~

Blair stumbled blindly after Ellison through what felt like miles of underground. He was relying on the bioluminescence to show him the way. He did have a high-tech military-issue flashlight, but was saving the batteries for a real emergency, although how much more real an emergency could get was certainly open to debate.

No longer chaperoned and guarded, Ellison had become a different person. Alive. In his element.

He halted in a chamber with a bit more air and light than the previous tunnels.

“Take a breather, Sandburg.” He began a check of his scavenged weapons.

Blair propped himself up against one faintly glowing rock wall and watched as Ellison popped the clip on Pendergrast’s handgun. He inspected the weapon like a pro, then tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. Next he unsheathed the saw-toothed knife, checked it, and resheathed it. It disappeared somewhere on his person, although too quickly for Blair to follow in the dim light. He was glad he was walking behind Ellison. The flesh between his shoulder blades itched. He was almost completely sure that Ellison wouldn’t hurt him… Almost.

Next Ellison took up Pendergrast’s machine gun, popping the clip on it, too. How he could see in the crappy light, Blair hadn’t a clue…but he was beginning to form some pretty interesting theories.

With a satisfied air, Ellison slid the clip back in the machine gun, carefully testing the action. It was both comforting and terrifying to Blair that Ellison was so obviously comfortable with weaponry. Both old and new.

Ellison, armed and dangerous for the first time in 13 long years, faced Blair. He brought his machine gun up. Blair raised his nine-millimetre pistol in self-defence.

“Don’t shoot me! Please.” Blair trembled, but held the gun steady enough.

Ellison slung his gun casually over his shoulder. “For Chrissake, Chief. Why would I want to do that?”

He headed back down the tunnel, muttering, “Why is it that when you’re a trained killer, everyone just assumes you _want_ to go around killing people? It’s just nice to have options.” Ellison trudged down the tunnel, Sandburg following him, unsure whether to reholster his pistol or not.

“Wait. Where’re you going?”

“Off this island. You mind?”

“Yes, I mind. As a matter of fact, I mind very much.”

From the tac radio in Ellison’s hand, Sanchez’s voice crackled.

“Sandburg. Blair. Come in.”

“It’s for you, Chief.”

Ellison tossed the tactical radio at Blair’s feet and marched off. Retrieving the phone from some truly offensive grunge, he depressed the talk button gingerly. “It’s me, sir. Er, ma’am. Er…”

“What’s happening there? Where’s Ellison?”

“He says he’s leaving the island.”

“Don’t let him do that. Stop him. Now!”

“He’s got a gun.”

“And precisely what do you have? A fucking water pistol? Get. Him. Back.”

Blair stared at the phone, then peered through the gloom after Ellison. More abusive orders crackled through the radio line. He decided he liked his chances better with Ellison and hurried after him, terminating the call as he jogged cautiously down the passageway.

He wiped something disgusting off his cheek.

 ~~~

Oliver and Zeller walked amongst the unconscious SEALs.

Their commander had been hit in the leg with a ricocheting bullet from one of their own guns, and the blond guy must have hit his head as he went down. Bright red blood ran over the stark white tiles and into the drainage grate.

“I never wanted this,” Oliver said. “Jesus Christ!”

With surprising gentleness, Zeller replied, “We knew it might happen, Norm.”

“Maybe now they’ll pay up.” Kincaid kicked at the third SEAL’s head, steel-toed boot clattering against Kevlar helmet.

“Maybe now they won’t,” Bruenell admonished. “And cut that out. Marines don’t kick a man when he’s down.”

Kincaid’s look said “fuck off”. Out loud he said, “Then maybe we should execute a few hostages.”

The kicked SEAL moved a little, not quite unconscious. He stared up at Oliver, slurring drunkenly, “You’ll go to hell for this, General. Bastard.” He spat weakly at his captor before passing out again. There were flecks of blood in the spittle on his lips. Could be a brain haemorrhage from the kick, could be he bit his tongue when he fell. Either way, medical attention would be a long time coming to the downed man.

Kincaid spoke quietly to Quinn. “We shoulda killed ’em for real. Put ’em out of their misery.”

They chuckled softly at the morbid prospect. “Might as well do it now, same as later.”

“Captain! Holster that sidearm.” Oliver was furious.

Kincaid lowered his weapon, not looking very chagrined. “Yes, sir.” To Quinn he added, “Betcha this ain’t the first time there’s been seamen on these here shower tiles.”

Quinn snickered at the crude joke.

Ever the peacemaker, Bruenell stepped in, ordering, “Kincaid. Quinn. That’s enough. Let’s get a couple of those old gurneys and get these soldiers locked up with the rest of the hostages.”

Glad to be rid of the task of managing the rank and file, Oliver leaned down, staring into Connor’s video feed.

 ~~~

Oliver’s face loomed large on the monitors of the FBI command centre. Brackett and Sanchez stared at their former compatriot, now turned enemy.

Oliver’s lips moved soundlessly. Perhaps he thought the cameras had voice transmission capability. His rage was clearly evident, though. No words were needed to communicate his hostility.

The transmission went dead.

 

  
**Chapter 22. Crossroads**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 8:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Saturday, 11:00 pm**

**Time Remaining: 12 hours**

 

Oliver’s men loaded the three fallen SEALs onto the gurneys as ordered.

They had entered the drainage pipe cautiously, and, seeing no one, manhandled Pendergrast up the ladder and onto a gurney of its own.

Chapel grabbed the gurney and headed for the door.

“Hold it, soldier.”

Bruenell bent over Pendergrast’s unmoving body, examining the equipment carefully, then shouting, “General! This man’s weapons and tac radio are missing!”

“So there were more rats in the cellar, then.” Oliver pointed to Quinn, motioning him to accompany Bruenell into the drainage pipe. “We need to exterminate these rodents, people. Let’s flush those pipes.”

Having first seen to the locking up of the drugged SEALs with the captive tourists, the officers exited the main cell house into the night, splitting up to search the island. Oliver ordered Captain Kincaid to scout the power plant, keeping Zeller with him as they headed toward the beach at the rear of the island.

Briefly, he checked in with Captain Sarris. No word from the Pentagon. But there was still time.

 ~~~

In the gloomy darkness beneath the prison, Blair trailed after Ellison. “Would you stop? Just stop. _Please?”_

At the sound of “please”, Ellison halted, not turning to face Blair.

“I don’t know what you did or why you were sent to jail, but there are thousands of people across that Bay who might die… _Will_ die, if you don’t help them.”

Ellison resumed walking forward down the tunnels into the gloom.

Steeling his resolve, Blair said softly, “Fuck this”, then shouted with force, “Stop! Freeze!”

Ellison stopped again; this time he turned to face Blair, whose gun was drawn and trained on him. The FBI-issue weapon was shaking visibly, despite being supported by both hands.

Blair took the supporting hand off the gun and reached it out beseechingly toward Ellison. “How can you not care about the thousands of lives at stake here?”

 ~~~

“Stop! Freeze!” Blair had shouted, and, above them, Kincaid immediately did so, quickly ascertaining that the voice he heard was drifting up to him via a ventilation grate not far from the power plant.

He stepped silently away from the vent, whispering into his own tac mike, “Rodents located.”

Although no one could see him, he nodded once at the directions he received from his superior and began readying a satchel explosive.

 ~~~

In the tunnels below, Ellison advanced on Sandburg.

Falling back on his scant weeks of training at the FBI academy, Blair called out, “Stop right there. I really mean it.” The “I really mean it” hadn’t been part of the FBI training per se, although they had mentioned that agents should improvise based on the situation.

To Blair’s great relief, Ellison actually stopped. He then proceeded to call Sandburg’s bluff by reaching out and tapping the gun with one hand. “If you really mean it, Rambo, take the safety off.”

In actuality, Blair hadn’t known whether he was bluffing or not. Could he really shoot someone? Especially someone he’d come to know a little? To perhaps care about… a bit. And how the hell could Ellison see whether the safety was on or not in the little bit of light the phytoplankton provided?

Blair was smart enough to know that if threatening failed, shooting to kill was more than a little counterproductive. Ellison had taught him that on the hotel roof only hours before. This time, Blair had thought that perhaps he could wing the other man a little. Still could. He fiddled with the safety catch, hands slipping in his haste and dampness now that he had a plan.

With a swipe, Ellison snatched the gun. They glared at each other, or at least Blair assumed Ellison was glaring back. He couldn’t see much in the gloom.

Blair actually felt somewhat grateful that Ellison had confiscated his gun. Now any decision about having to shoot the man had been taken out of his hands. He could only suppose Ellison was grateful not to have been shot.

Ending any further introspection, Sanchez’ voice crackled over the tac radio, interrupting the edgy tableau. “Agent Sandburg. Blair. Come in. Have you resolved the problem?”

Snatching up the radio, he responded nastily, frustration colouring his words, “Why, yes, Agent Sanchez. Remember when I said Mr. Ellison had a gun? I’d like to amend that report by informing you that now Mr. Ellison has _all_ the guns.”

Resolutely, he clicked off the tac radio altogether, not waiting for her reply, not wanting to be interrupted again at this important point in their negotiations. He said to Ellison in low tones, “You’ve got to help me. What do you want me to do, beg?”

“Much as I might enjoy that, Chief, save your breath and your dignity, if you have any. I’m leaving. I never want to set foot on this fucking island again in this or any other lifetime. I am going to Cascade. I am going to warn my brother, my father, and, I suppose, my ex-wife. In that order. And then I’m going to get the hell out of Cascade!”

Ellison stalked off into the darkness, the squelching of his footfalls in the inch-deep guano and undefined filth echoing off the slimy rock cavern.

Blair sighed, feeling emotionally deflated even as he conjured up and discarded options. A corner of his mind followed the diminishing sound of Ellison’s footsteps, expecting them to recede into the distance. What he wasn’t expecting was to hear a dull thud-splash mere yards down the stone corridor. He most certainly wasn’t expecting Ellison to pause, scream _“Run!”_ and head back in Blair’s direction.

And run Blair did. He’d learned enough about James Ellison to listen to his orders and not ask questions. He turned on a dime, or more precisely, on a pile of bat shit, and charged back the way they’d just come. Ellison pounded at his heels.

They’d travelled a very few yards when Ellison grabbed Blair’s jacket collar and yanked him sideways, down an off-shooting tunnel. Blair fell heavily on top of Ellison, who grabbed him and rolled them so that Blair was lying supine on the filthy ground, pinned against the dank wall by Ellison’s larger body. Panting heavily, Blair reached up and covered the top of Ellison’s head with his free hand. Ellison did the same to Blair.

One long second. Two long seconds. Clasped and panting like lovers, they waited.

Then came an explosion so loud it rang like a bell. Or maybe that was their eardrums’ way of interpreting the shock waves.

The tunnel virtually imploded, raining rock, ancient cement and ageing lumber down on the huddled men.

 

 

**Chapter 23. Deep Water**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Saturday, 9:30 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 12:30 am**

**Time Remaining: 10.5 hours**

 

Having received the “rodents located” message and subsequent orders, Bruenell and Quinn hurriedly exited the drainage tunnel and returned to the shower room. With a few quick motions, Quinn ferreted out equipment they’d stowed in the area earlier. Bruenell watched impatiently while Quinn attached a pack of C-4 to a tank of gasoline and casually tossed it down the drainage pipe, cackling as if it were funny.

Bruenell turned away in disgust. He considered killing an art, not a fun pastime. He couldn’t wait to get his money and get away from this hick. Indeed, from the entire group of psychos.

The gas bomb detonated, blowing a wall of flame through the tunnel. The fire, looking for escape, hunted and burned everything in its route.

 ~~~

Further down the tunnel, Ellison and Blair had clambered to their feet just in time to see the wall of flame roaring toward them. Ellison grabbed Blair, screaming, “Hold your breath!” and dragged him into a pool of stagnant water located fortuitously close to their refuge. It was only about three to four feet deep, but it was large enough to hold them both. They remained submerged as long as they could.

Unable to hold his breath another second, Blair came up gasping. He fully expected to inhale a mouthful of roaring flame. Instead, he huffed air; reeking, acrid, heated, but not deadly. He and Ellison lay in the pool, panting the thin air. The flames had seared away much of the oxygen, but the air vents and fissures in the rocks, along with the natural springs, quickly restocked the air.

Blair lay for long minutes half in and half out of the water before it occurred to him that some deeply unpleasant things could be calling it home. He scrabbled out of the fetid pool onto the tunnel floor. Ellison heaved himself out as well, sprawling beside him, one arm still wrapped around Blair protectively.

“Why aren’t we dead, Chief?”

“Because you, my saviour and new best friend, are obviously a really big cat with nine or more lives.” The sentence depleted his current supply of oxygen, and he rested a moment before continuing.

“Your extra lives, man, must either be contagious or transferable.” Blair crawled a little further away from the glorified puddle before providing a more realistic explanation. “The percussion of the explosion must have carried the wall of flame past us. Right over our heads and on through the tunnel system.”

He heard Ellison sniffing in the humid darkness. “With only the smell of crispy bat flesh to mark its passing.”

Blair sniffed too, nose hairs crinkling in the blistering aftermath of the explosion. The awful smell actually made his stomach growl a bit. It had been a while since they’d had any of the field rations they carried, luckily in water-tight wrappers.

“Come on, Chief.” Ellison hoisted himself upright and headed off. Blair collected himself and straggled along on Ellison’s tail, feeling the very picture of bedraggled.

Leaving the scorched tunnels behind with the first jog in the passageway, Ellison led them through a complicated dance of twists and turns. Five, 10 minutes later— it was hard to judge time in the Stygian depths— they stopped before a large indentation in the wall. Blair ran the flashlight around the arching depression. It appeared to be a sealed-off opening into another passageway. It was probably a sizable cavern, based on the dimensions of the bricked-up opening.

He’d managed to retain his flashlight throughout the explosion and subsequent immersion. Thank God the military had had the foresight to build a wrist loop on that particular model. And that Connor had had the good sense to equip her team with it.

Thinking of Connor, he felt a stab of fear. What was happening to the incursion team? He had to assume that Oliver had a reason for using tranquilizer darts instead of bullets. They probably weren’t dead yet, but there were no guarantees that the renegade Marines had any intention of keeping their hostages alive.

Blair felt a renewed sense of urgency, demanding, “Now what?”

“This brick and mortar is circa 1855,” Ellison explained tersely, as if that were clarification enough.

He moved to the bricked-up wall, feeling around the mortar. A single brick came away in his hand. He tossed it casually behind him, almost hitting Blair. “Sorry, Chief.” He removed another brick. Another. Another. A whole clump of bricks fell at his feet, revealing a hole.

“I came out right through there.” He squeezed through the hole, with some wriggling and struggling, muttering something about gaining a few pounds since his last sojourn through these tunnels.

Blair followed him through the opening, snapping sarcastically, “Yeah. I hear the American penal system is known for its tempting, low-carb cuisine.”

Ellison crawled on without responding.

Finally able to stand upright again, Blair peered around the interior of an ancient dungeon-like room.

The larger cavern was darker, since the glowing walls were further away. Blair grabbed his flashlight and, beaming it around, saw they’d emerged onto a ledge facing more dank water. On the order of small underground lake, it extended at least 100 yards across the cavern.

“How deep is it?” Blair asked resignedly. What was one more dunking in a stagnant pool? He was still soaked from the last one and wished he’d never changed out of his dry suit into civvies when they’d first arrived. He was starting to chafe in some very sensitive places.

Gesturing at the foul pool, Ellison said, “Probably no more than three feet at the deepest part. We just have to wade across it. Then it’s just 50 more yards to the morgue.”

Blair looked at him blankly. “The morgue.”

“You said that’s where the poison is. Right, Sandburg?”

“Yeah. I did. But I don’t get it. I don’t get _you._ Now you’re helping me?”

“No. Now I’m going to give you dance lessons. What the fuck do you think?”

“Well, you don’t have to get all bent out of shape.”

“What’s all bent out of shape, Darwin, is the tunnel I was going through to freedom five minutes ago. Now I’ve gotta help you if I’m ever going to get off this fucking rock.”

“All right, all right. If you happen to be saving the population of Cascade at the same time, that’s just a side benefit, right?”

Ellison rolled his eyes. “What did I do to deserve this? What God did I offend?”

Shaking his head at the complicated picture that was James Ellison, Blair began to head into the pool.

“Freeze!” Again, Blair followed Ellison’s life-saving orders, pulling his toe back onto the ledge. “There. And there.” Ellison pointed to certain places in the water.

Blair squinted but could make out nothing. Ellison took the flashlight from his hand and focused the beam on one spot that seemed somehow darker than the rest. The water sort of… moved. It shimmered and rippled, which was odd in an interior chamber like this one.

Blair took back the flashlight, since Ellison didn’t seem to need one. He shone it at the simmering spot Ellison had indicated, then another nearer to shore. He remained unable to determine what was causing the motion until an area right in front of their ledge began to roil slightly.

Then his flashlight illuminated the cause. The water seethed with snakes!

Blair jumped backward, almost knocking Ellison into the water. Ellison clutched at him, but the rock was slimy with algae. They swayed on the edge of the stone shelf, and each time one would gain his balance, the other would throw it off again in a deadly Vaudeville skit.

After long moments of teetering, both men stood, panting, swearing and sweating. Pushing away Sandburg’s clutching hands, Ellison unpacked the quart-size squeezable tube of motor oil he’d requested, explaining, “Cottonmouth snakes. They breathe through their skin. Oil clogs it. They hate the stuff.”

Ellison squeezed a big glob of motor oil into the pool, where its heavy viscosity caused it to spread quickly across the water, helped along by the tiny ripples the blob made when it hit the surface. The snakes scattered, hanging out at the almost visible perimeter of the oil slick. Once the cottonmouths seemed sufficiently warded off, Ellison waded in, guns and ammo held well above the water level.

“The water ’round here’s full of ’em. The prison never tried to get rid of them because it helped keep the inmates from escaping after a few died trying.”

Blair followed hesitantly, hoping he wasn’t going to be one of the unfortunates who died trying.

“But you escaped,” he whispered, afraid to disturb the watery reptiles.

“I got a book on snakes from the prison library. Identified the species. It said they don’t like oil.”

Ellison tended to keep his explanations brief.

And the cottonmouths were, indeed, repulsed by the oil, and kept their distance. Blair tried not to look at the agitated snakes. In a few long moments, they crossed the pool.

Reaching the other side, Blair took a moment to share with Ellison something that had been on his mind for a bit. “Hey, Ellison,” he called as Jim prepared to head down the next tunnel, “explain something to me.”

Ellison turned toward him, face unreadable in the shadows.

“If I’m the FBI agent here, and you’re the convict, why is it that you have all the guns?”

Without comment, Ellison slapped the nine-millimetre pistol into Blair’s hand and walked off. Again Blair followed, feeling just the slightest bit better. Normally he didn’t much care for firearms, but these were unusual circumstances. He suddenly had new insight into the whole concept of situational ethics.

Ellison and Blair arrived at a fork in the tunnel. Ellison steered them confidently to the right.

“The morgue?” Blair asked.

Ellison nodded, moving to a steel-rung ladder leading to a garbage chute. Blair followed. It was getting to be a habit.

Ellison and Blair emerged from the garbage chute, freezing in their tracks when they heard voices in the next room.

 ~~~

The first voice had a country drawl with bad grammar and worse narration skills. The country boy was bragging about his recent handiwork with the C4 that had almost been the death of Jim and Blair.

“An’ then the Sarge says to me, ‘Quinn’, he says. ‘Quinn, that was a damn fine fire bomb you made there. I’m gonna be sure to tell the Gen’rel.’”

A second voice muttered something that must have been less than appreciative. The Quinn character rounded on him. “You know what your problem is, Chapel? You just don’t got no respect. Not for me, not for Sarge and not for the Gen’rel. I dunno why you’re even here!”

The one called Chapel spoke in a coldly intelligent manner. “I’m here because the ‘Gen’rel’, as you put it, anticipated that any incursion team worth sending in would have the intelligence to figure out where the poison was being housed and make for the morgue post haste.”

“I didn’t mean here here. I mean _here_ here.” That almost made sense to Blair. “Never mind.”

Ellison tapped Blair on the shoulder and moved away from the tiny observation window. Blair moved to peer through it from one side.

One private was pacing around the morgue, muttering frightening threats and curses.

The second private was lying on his back on a mortician’s table, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. A large and scary rifle rested on his chest, rising and falling with every puff.

“Ya know, Chapel…” he began.

Blair nodded his understanding as Ellison indicated to him to stay put. Ellison moved soundlessly across the room, but the slight creak of the ageing hinges alerted the soldiers they had company.

In a smooth, trained motion, the man on the table—Quinn, apparently—tossed the cigarette aside, grabbed his gun and rolled off and under the dented metal table. Blair strained to see the last place the man had looked and managed to catch a glimpse of Jim Ellison framed in the old morgue doorway.

Quinn kept down, waiting.

Across the room Chapel whirled, raising his M-16 into firing position. Ellison’s hand flashed and the saw-toothed knife that had once been Pendergrast’s soared the length of the room and buried itself in Chapel’s left shoulder.

Instead of the expected scream of pain, Chapel just grunted through clenched teeth. He gave Ellison a nod of acknowledgement and, lowering the M-16, reached for the knife handle protruding from his shoulder. Yanking it loose with another grunt, he tossed the knife on the tiles and reached for his tac radio.

His shocked outrage was obvious when he discovered Ellison’s precision knife toss had cleanly sliced the connecting wires in two.

Chapel dashed out the rear entrance, footsteps echoing down the hall. Gone for the cavalry, Blair conjectured. Why hadn’t Ellison just killed him, he wondered?

Still standing in the doorway, Ellison called, “Remember, Sandburg, never hesitate. There are no tranquilizer darts in their weapons now!”

As if to prove that point, Quinn fired from his position around the mortician’s table. It certainly didn’t sound like tranquilizer darts. Blair heard bullets shatter tile and ricochet around the room, bouncing off ceramic and metal and wood.

Blair watched as Ellison dove for cover. He couldn’t tell if his partner had been hit or not.

In direct disobedience to Ellison’s order, Blair charged into the room firing in Quinn’s direction almost without looking as he dove behind a banged-up old filing cabinet. Ellison, underneath a long-forgotten desk, fired at Quinn’s foot, exposed by the autopsy table.

Movement caught Blair’s eye, and, glancing right, he discovered he could see Quinn reflected in a darkened window. Behind his table, Quinn unclipped a grenade from his utility belt and moved it toward his mouth to pull the pin.

Before he could do so, Ellison fired his entire clip into the air.

Confused, Quinn stared at the ceiling… just in time to see a huge industrial air conditioner shift and sway crazily. Its damaged mounting gave and it dropped, pinning Quinn under its weight. The grenade, pin still secure, rolled away.

Blair rose and looked at the corpse under the air conditioner, just its legs sticking out. He half expected the feet to suddenly curl up and join the rest of the body like the Wicked Witch of the West.

“I sure hope you didn’t learn that in prison.”

“No, and I used to be a lot quicker. Out of practice, I guess.” He pocketed Quinn’s unused grenade.

“I’ve got some questions for you, but they can wait.”

“I don’t kill unless absolutely necessary,” Ellison intoned solemnly, checking the room quickly.

Moving swiftly, Blair began opening the corpse drawers one after another, searching for the Ebola-hybrid gas. He tried to be silent like Ellison, but the drawers were stiff with disuse. The old metal screeched and clanked despite his best efforts.

Blair gasped when he found the stolen chem rounds.

He carefully hoisted out one of the large canisters, calling to Ellison, “There’s supposed to be six here. I’ve only got two.”

Finished reconnoitring and scavenging, Ellison joined Blair at the corpse drawer. Copying Blair’s movements, he lifted the other chem round from its drawer, accidentally knocking it against the metal side in the process.

“Careful there, man. The second you don’t respect this, it kills you. Kills us,” Blair corrected himself.

They moved the chem rounds over to the mortician’s table. It was still warm from Quinn’s body heat. His cigarette smouldered nearby on the cement floor.

Keeping his eyes away from Quinn’s body and his hands steady by sheer willpower, Blair pulled out his equipment kit and began detaching the tops of the chem rounds. Inside each one was a three-foot strand of green glass globes strung together like a length of beads.

He reached inside, carefully extracting a strand of poison pearls.

“I need a hand here, please.”

Ellison looked anxiously at those poison pearls.

“Ellison. Jim. Help me. Now!”

Blair handed the strand to Ellison, who held it as far away from himself as he could. Blair almost giggled. Arm’s length was just not going to cut it with this shit.

“What exactly does this do to you?” Ellison asked.

“Normally, with Ebola, you get flu-like symptoms, your cells break down.”

Blair conjured up a tiny screwdriver like a magician.

“You bleed out and you die. Takes several days.”

Ellison shifted uneasily. Blair thought he saw something resembling fear in those ice-blue eyes.

“Now this stuff here…”

He gradually loosened a series of screws, each one a little at a time, trying to keep the rounds balanced.

“...has been bio-chemically engineered to be super fast acting. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation and you’ll know it.”

Gently, Blair pulled away the brass housing to expose the chem round’s guidance system.

“A twinge at the small of your back as the poison seizes the nervous system.”

Inside were tiny guidance system microchips. Blair plucked the chip from the first chem round and pocketed it.

“Then loss of muscular function.”

He took the green strand back from Ellison and inserted it back in its housing.

“Then you spit your guts out, which…”

He carefully put the brass housing back in place.

“...at that point, will look just like a tub of spaghetti spilled on the floor. The fancy gourmet kind they make with squid ink so it resembles grey, dead worms.”

And slipped the chain of poison pearls back into its chem round tubing.

“Then your skin turns black…”

Ellison stared uneasily at the pearl strand. “Sounds a bit like my marriage.”

“And it’s an airborne contagion. If a single teaspoon of this shit were to hit the floor, it would be lethal within 100 feet. If one teaspoon were to detonate in the atmosphere, it would kill everyone within an eight-block radius. The good news is…”

“Oh, there’s good news, is there?”

Blair ignored the caustic interruption. “...is that the enhanced Ebola-hybrid virus, while highly contagious, is very short lived.”

“And that’s good news because…”

Blair actually grinned. It was good to be one step ahead of his enforced partner for once. Then he remembered exactly what he was talking about and sobered up sharply.

“You’re a military commander. You detonate these six rockets above a city you want to take, and _bam!_ Only a few hours later, most of the inhabitants are dead, but so is the virus. The city is yours to occupy at your leisure, with all its resources and structure intact. Only downside is you have to clear away all the bodies and…”

“The ‘squid ink spaghetti’.”

“Right.”

“Sounds like the ideal biological weapon of war.”

“Yeah. As a bio-chemist, I can appreciate the perfection. As a human being…”

He let the thought lie as he switched on the tac radio. “Prospect Pier. Come in. Hello, Beverley!”

“Blair? Where the hell’ve you been? Talk to me.” Apparently she’d abandoned the tough-bitch persona. Her voice was full of genuine concern.

“We’re in the morgue. We’ve found two rockets so far and have managed to remove the guidance system chip from the first one.”

Blair went on, explaining more to Ellison than to Sanchez, who already knew all about the plan to disarm the deadly missiles. “Without ’em, the rockets’ll fly about 500 feet and splash down like wounded ducks. Stuff’s harmless in salt water.”

He quickly finished up his report, disconnected and started on the second chem round.

“I gotta ask you something, Chief.”

Blair turned, expecting any and all kinds of bio-chem technical questions. Maybe a personal revelation. A cry for absolution. A proposition.

“I know I’ve been away for a while…” Ellison paused, face unreadable.

“You can ask me anything, man.” Blair smiled encouragingly. Who knew what people thought under stress?

“When did they start making pasta with squid ink?”

Blair chuckled, grateful for the bit of humour in this overwhelmingly tense situation. “You need to get out more, man.”

Ellison nodded. “I couldn’t agree more, Chief. I couldn’t agree more.”

Refocussing on the task at hand, Blair’d just loosened the first screw when the unexpected sound of a voice almost made him drop the poison. He whirled around toward the sound, quickly realizing that the dead private’s walkie-talkie must have become detached during the shoot-out. Unlike its former owner, it was undamaged and now was chattering at them.

Blair recognized the voice of General Oliver from the briefing sessions, saying, “Quinn. Chapel. Come in.”

He exchanged a nervous look with Ellison, who gestured for him to continue the disarming of the chem round.

“Privates Quinn and Chapel, come in. _Now, soldiers!”_

There were no further communications from the radio, but still, Ellison cocked his head to one side, listening intently. Blair heard nothing as he resumed work on the second chem round. Then Ellison reported, “They’ve figured out what happened to their missing men. They’ll be on us in two minutes.”

“Wait a sec.” Blair gestured angrily, swinging the glass beads around frighteningly. “Oliver stole six chem rounds. There’s only two here. Quickly. Help me finish with this one.”

Ellison raised the poison pearl strand from the remaining chem round. Blair hurriedly plucked the chip from the guidance system. They worked together smoothly, gracefully, far better than either had been doing apart.

Finishing the second round in half the time of the first, despite shaking hands, Blair replaced it where he’d found it, sans guidance device.

“That went well. Now if we can just locate the other four.”

Blair quickly repacked his tool kit, knowing they’d be joined any second.

 

 

**Chapter 24. Blind Man’s Bluff**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 11:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 2:00 am**

**Time Remaining: 8.5 hours**

 

Oliver and his renegade Marines converged on the morgue, surrounding the doorway. At a hand signal from Oliver they burst inside, guns sweeping around the cavernous room, ready to shoot anything that moved.

Ellison and Sandburg were caught heading into the adjoining room, intent on returning to the garbage chute by which they’d entered. Already in furious motion, they sprinted the last few steps, bullets chewing up the floor at their heels. They ducked behind an ancient metal trolley, which acted as rolling cover for the last few yards.

Having reached the chute, Ellison tried to get Blair to go first. It meant standing up for a vital second in order to open and dive into the access shaft.

Blair hesitated, reluctant to leave their temporary safety and return to the hail of bullets. Leading the way instead, Ellison dove in first. Blair watched him execute a rolling dive that would have made any professional tumbler proud.

One deep breath and Blair followed, stretching and arcing his compact frame. He braced for an indelicate crash landing, but was jerked up short, dangling helplessly, unable to go up or down. He quickly ascertained that his damn tac radio had caught on some sort of protuberance on the side of the chute. He’d be shot like the proverbial fish in a barrel if he didn’t move. And quickly. He twisted in alarm, reaching up to tug at the strap.

“Freeze!”

Sandburg seized up instantly, trusting the now-familiar voice in the near darkness, below. The small amount of light that leeched into the tunnel through the incinerator opening glinted from Ellison’s saw-toothed knife as it zinged past his right ear, neatly slicing the strap.

He landed heavily at the bottom of the chute, directly at Ellison’s feet. Ellison yanked him upright, Blair handing him the knife he’d thought to grab off the floor on the way up. Thank God he hadn’t landed on it!

“Last time I saw that, it was buried in somebody’s shoulder,” Sandburg commented.

“You were busy. I retrieved it. Thought we might need it.”

Blair was momentarily comforted by Ellison’s use of the plural pronoun; he chose to interpret that as Ellison having decided not to off him or dump him any time soon. Very comforting, indeed.

Blair glanced back up the chute for a moment, knowing they should move and move fast. The tac radio hung on the piece of broken pipe sticking out into the incinerator chute, well within reach of anyone in the morgue. Blair shuddered. That could have been him dangling there.

“I… thanks,” he began.

Ellison nodded, then herded Blair back down the corridor the way they’d come until they reached the fork in the tunnel. Previously they’d taken the right-hand fork; this time Ellison started down the left-hand side, Blair stumbling after him.

About 50 yards along, with unnamed filth squelching beneath their shoes and the creaking of thousands of bats above them, the narrow tunnel opened into a wider shaft. Blair focused his flashlight beam on the path directly before him, not willing to see millions of screaming bat faces disturbed by his passage.

The bioluminescent phytoplankton must have been thick on the walls throughout this old system of tunnels. Blair sheathed his flashlight, and, after a few moments, his eyes adjusted and he was able to see in the gloom without draining his batteries further.

The cavern was filled with decaying equipment. It looked like an old mining operation, although it was probably part of the earlier smuggling or bootlegging set-up, since nothing had ever been mined on this pile of shale and sandstone.

An old railway-style transport system wound its way off into the darkness. It was like something out of a cartoon mineshaft. Three rickety carts sat within easy reach. Sandburg and Ellison exchanged a brief glance and climbed into the first one. Ellison threw the release lever and the old cart started down the track, the wheels screeching on the metal rail, almost fused to it with decades of disuse.

 ~~~

Once sure that no one was firing back at them, Oliver and his team undertook a smooth reconnaissance of the morgue. Zeller and Kincaid checkout out their fallen comrade beneath the air conditioner. They stepped carefully over the blood that trickled toward the drains in the purposely sloping floor. No doubt it followed a pathetic trail blazed by blood and other bodily fluids from years of death, autopsies and embalmings.

Oliver crossed to the mortician’s table and examined the missiles and chem rounds Sandburg had left behind when interrupted. In minutes, he had ascertained the theft of the guidance chips.

“Zeller! Go. Follow them. Take Kincaid with you!”

Zeller and Kincaid checked the incinerator chute carefully, wary of an ambush. Kincaid leaned into the tunnel, supported by his comrade, and grabbed Sandburg’s abandoned tac radio. Passing it to Oliver, they descended, Kincaid lowering Zeller, then allowing himself to drop heavily on the shaft floor beside him.

They debated which tunnel to take, since the dust had been recently disturbed in both directions. Eventually their military-issue flashlights and Zeller’s keen eyes ascertained that one set of prints was facing forward and the other heading away. They followed the away ones.

 ~~~

By the time Oliver’s search-and-destroy team had reached the railway cavern, Ellison and Blair had travelled a ways down the track in their borrowed cart. Blair peered over the rough, rusty side, barely able to discern the arrival of a pair of Oliver’s renegades.

As he watched, the pair split up, each soldier taking one of the remaining carts and heading out in pursuit of their quarry.

The motion of Blair and Ellison’s cart must have loosened years of grit and rust, which allowed the two following carts to travel faster and faster down the rail after them. Only about 50 yards separated Jim and Blair’s cart from the men chasing them.

One of the soldiers raised his M-16, took careful aim at the fleeing men in front of him, and fired.

“Duck!” Ellison screeched, but Blair had seen it coming and was already hunkered down, protected by the iron sides of the old cart. Jim threw himself against Blair, huddling below the lip of the ageing metal.

Blair listened, but all he could hear were bullets ricocheting around the tunnel walls. Ellison also appeared to be listening carefully, but was somehow getting a clue when it was safe to pop up to return fire. Not that it seemed to be accomplishing anything.

Ellison knelt up again, then threw himself back down again, this time without firing.

“Fuck!”

Blair’s heart stuttered at Ellison’s expletive. What more could go wrong? “The last fucker’s got a rocket launder. Armed. With a grenade!”

Blair scrambled into a crouch and peered over the rim. Behind them, the third cart had reached a sharp switchback in the rail, and its occupant could safely fire without hitting his compatriot between them. And did so, the grenade projectile shooting down the tunnel.

Ellison and Sandburg ducked as the it flew over their heads, continuing down the tunnel and detonating against the wall.

Their cart roared through smoke and debris left by the explosion. Thank God the entire tunnel hadn’t come crashing down around them. Which had probably been the intention of their pursuer.

As they rounded a corner, and were momentarily out of the enemy’s line of sight, Ellison jumped up, balancing for a second on the lip of the cart, and leapt out. Blair continued down the track, shocked to suddenly find himself alone.

 ~~~

Surveying his immediate surroundings for a weapon, Ellison seized a length of broken sewage pipe dangling from one wall and yanked it free. Just before the second cart rattled around the corner, he stepped quickly into a slight depression in the walls, hoping to be invisible in the shadows.

When cart and occupant were directly in front of him, Ellison swung the pipe, hitting the unsuspecting soldier flush in the forehead. The renegade was knocked cleanly from his cart. He lay unmoving on the ground, either dead or unconscious.

With no one to engage the brake, the now-empty cart continued rolling down the line after Blair.

Ellison quickly dragged the motionless man into the shadows and returned to his ambush spot to wait for cart number three to round the corner.

When it did he swung again, but this time the occupant was ready for him. The soldier grabbed the pipe as it swung at him and used it to pull the surprised Ellison into the cart.

The two men wrestled until a surprise move smashed Ellison’s head against the heavy metal of the cart. He sprawled on the filthy floor, an M-16 pointing directly at him.

“I’ll see you in hell!” the enraged soldier screamed at him.

“Not if I see you first!” Jim spat back. He whipsawed his legs under the soldier, bowling him over and knocking the M-16 right out of his hands. It dropped uselessly on the cavern floor as they sped down the track.

Both men scrambled to their feet, trading blow after blow as the cart roared through the tunnel.

 ~~~

Up front, Blair looked over his shoulder to discover Ellison and Oliver’s man locked in mortal combat. He yanked on the cart’s brake hard and began slowing down. The empty cart that separated the two occupied one rammed into Blair’s with enough force to send him sprawling and to clip the two carts together as they were designed to do.

 ~~~

In the rear cart, Ellison was knocked back to the floor. His assailant dove atop him, grabbing his throat and trying to strangle him. Ellison’s head was forced backward over the front lip of the cart. His upside-down view of the track ahead showed him the back end of the other carts. And to his horror, they appeared to be slowing down and coming directly toward him!

“Oh, God!” Blair screamed. “I’m gonna ram him!”

Blair released the brake, causing his cart to pick up speed again, dragging the empty cart with it.

The renegade Marine drew his knife from its sheathe, raised it threateningly above Ellison’s now-purple face. With the last of his strength, Ellison rolled away just as the knife plunged down, narrowly missing him. The momentum of the strike caused the man to stumble a step forward. Ellison’s breakaway roll had brought him to the back of the cart. Still gasping for breath, he planted one booted foot squarely on the other man’s ass, shoving his head and shoulders over the front lip of the cart.

“Brake, Chief! Brake!” Ellison screamed.

 ~~~

Without hesitation, Blair obeyed, throwing all his weight on the hand brake, and succeeding in bringing the heavy double cart to a virtual standstill. Ellison’s cart slammed into it at about 20 miles an hour. Not a great velocity, but more than enough to crush the Marine’s head like an overripe cantaloupe.

Sickened, Blair turned away, almost missing the fact that the collision had knocked Ellison right out of his cart. Jim’s head slammed against the tunnel wall, where he slid down into unconsciousness. The lead cart was shoved by the collision across a ditch of water in the tunnel floor.

Blair’s cart travelled a few hundred more yards down the track before he could bring it to a halt. Then much jarred, but still whole, Blair got groggily to his feet and jumped out, his shouts echoing loudly. “Ellison! _Ellison!”_

Following the tracks over which he’d just travelled, Blair headed back down the tunnel toward Ellison, heartily grateful for the helpful little creatures that lit his way.

Another of the stagnant pools that populated the island’s underground halted his progress. The railway track, supported by ancient timbers, spanned about 20 feet of water. The wooden ties had long since rotted out, so there was no way he could follow the route his cart had taken.

Peering right and left into the gloom, he hesitated, sussing out the quickest way around the foul water. In the silence, he thought he heard footsteps ahead of him. “Ellison!” he called again.

He peered down the trail and observed another military man heading toward him, probably drawn to his shouts. Blair froze, watching as the other man approached, only to trip heavily over something.

“Ellison.” This time Blair whispered the name like a prayer.

Trapped on the other side of the ditch, Blair could only watch, horrified, as the man knelt over Ellison’s concussed and helpless body in the dim light of the cavern. He drew a glinting knife, no doubt preparing to cut the unconscious man’s throat.

“Wait!” Blair screamed across the dark pool that separated them. “Don’t do it!”

Blair gambled that the man had a lifetime of responding to direct orders. And maybe, just maybe, the tiniest bit of reluctance to kill a man in cold blood. The soldier lowered his knife, peering through the dim light at Blair.

“Pretty easy to kill an unconscious man.” Blair’s panicky breathing almost ruined the taunting effect he was striving for. “How about trying me instead, punk? What’re you waiting for, limp-dick? How ’bout taking a gamble on me instead?”

Blair must have hit just the right note because the soldier immediately turned his attention from his unconscious victim to the mouthy one. He snarled at Blair. “I am going to fuck you up something fierce. You rolled the wrong number, shithead. You just crapped out.”

Abandoning Ellison’s sprawled form, he moved quickly after his new prey, jumping into the ditch and wading swiftly across the 20 or so feet that separated him from Blair.

Blair locked eyes with the angry man, and made no attempt to escape.

At its deepest point the water in the ditch was only up to the soldier’s waist, and he emerged rapidly. Blair shuddered but stood his ground, the water now only thigh deep.

“C’mon. C’mon,” Blair muttered, not at the advancing soldier, but at the watery darkness around him. What if he’d figured wrong?

Suddenly the man screamed and began thrashing about in the now knee-deep puddle, the fangs of a huge cottonmouth snake plunged into his thigh. Knees buckling, he slid slowly into the water. A second cottonmouth shot out, striking his neck. He shrieked one last time before sliding gently beneath the surface. Roiling snakes and a mass of bubbles marked his passage.

“I rolled snake eyes, shithead. I win. You lose! Big.”

A few deep breaths and he was off again; the emotional consequences of his action would have to wait for later. Right now, he felt a massive admixture of relief, triumph and urgency for the people of Cascade.

And, more immediately, for Ellison.

Scouting around quickly, Blair stumbled across an old cable coiled on his side of the pool. Pulling it taut, he realized it was connected to something solid on the far side. He returned to his hastily ditched cart and managed to pull himself along the cable hand over hand. He eased the cart back across the stagnant ditch, wading not an option since Ellison was still packing the motor oil.

Long minutes later, with aching hands, he reached the other side and clambered out. Ellison was slowly regaining his feet.

“Limp-dick, Chief? That the best you could do?”

“It’s all I could think of.” He bristled a bit.

“Seems to have worked.” Ellison reached out and laid a hand on Blair’s shoulder. “Guess you hit a sore spot, Shecky.”

Blair grinned. “More like a limp spot.”

They stumbled off down the tunnel, although where they were going Blair had no idea. But he’d come to trust Ellison, so he followed. Not much choice, really.

 

 

**Chapter 25. Spare Parts**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 5:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 8:30 am**

**Time Remaining: 2.5 hours**

 

In stark contrast with the darkness under the Cascade Correctional Center, the White House was awash in early morning light as the interminable night finally ended and a new day dawned pinkly over America’s capital.

Trays of expensive breakfast pastries and urns of coffee beckoned from the credenza near the massive double doors at the back of the Roosevelt Room. An impressive assemblage of high-ranking officials gathered for an update on the Triple-C crisis. Present were White House Chief of Staff Simon Banks, National Security Advisor Jack Kelso (the only one drinking the decaf), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joel Taggart, and CIA Acting Assistant Director Cassie Wells. Only Air Force General Sarah Finkelman was absent, having flown to Mojave to personally supervise the proceedings of the willy peterinitiative. Commandeering an Air Force jet for her exclusive use was never a problem.

“The President arrives in three hours. His directive is for us to string Oliver along until the willy peterair strike is operational,” Banks reported, toying continually with an unlit cigar. “The reports I’m receiving from Cascade lead me to believe we can’t count on the Operation Cypher team any more.”

Jack Kelso rubbed his tired eyes and wheeled a little closer to the great round mahogany table. “General Taggart,” he began. “You’ve been in touch with General Finkelman. What’s the word from Mojave?”

“They’re going as fast as they can,” Taggart answered grimly. “She’s stated that both the chemical and the means to deliver it will be ready on time.”

“Well, she pretty much has to work on that assumption, now doesn’t she?” Acting A.D. Wells tossed her red curls over her shoulder. “All we can do now is pray.”

And eat, apparently, thought Kelso uncharitably, as Wells reached for another almond croissant.

 ~~~

The Mojave Desert USAF Testing Facility was an imposing title for a corrugated aluminum hangar in the middle of nowhere. It looked like a really big garage, the kind used for indoor car races. And it was equally noisy and exhaust filled inside.

Eight guided missiles loomed high in the air, suspended from hoists. From warhead to wicked-looking fins, they measured eight feet in length. Most of them were in some stage of disassembly, technicians hovering over, under and around them.

In a corner, away from the shriek of pneumatic tools and the tinny blare of rock music from a well-used boom box, Captain Mitch Reeves huddled to discuss the unpromising situation with his daughter, subordinate and indispensable right hand, Lieutenant Debra Reeves.

“I hate to say it, Deb, but I think we’re well and truly screwed.”

“What’s the problem?”

He turned to face the menacing hardware rocking harmlessly in their elevated hammocks. “We can arm ’em with willy peter _,_ no problem, but negatory on smart bomb capability.”

“What are you saying, Dad?”

“The pilots are gonna have to drop ’em manually. We’re talkin’ retro, baby. We’re talkin’ World War II. We’re going to have to install a device that will allow the pilots to aim by dead reckoning.”

“But we can do it, right?”

“Right, but then our work is done. It’ll be up to the pilots to accomplish the mission.”

“Isn’t it always?” Debra snarked. “But we’ve made the deadline. The initiative they said was impossible is now a go!”

Reeves Senior grabbed his tac radio and channelled the big brass. “Come in, General Finkelman. We have good news. I say again, we have good news in the destruction department.”

“If you can call it that.” Debra grabbed her tools and headed back to the missiles that were now being reassembled.

 ~~~

Warily, Ellison and Sandburg entered the main watchtower. They’d spent the last few hours searching for the rest of the rockets in the tunnels and throughout the Triple-C facility, managing to stay just a step ahead of Oliver and his remaining soldiers.

Their journey had combed a goodly portion of the tunnel system under the island’s surface. Blair was tired, bruised, singed, footsore, and hungry despite the field rations they’d consumed on the move.

Ellison had used a combination of purloined radio equipment and his enhanced hearing to determine that only three Marines remained of Oliver’s original rogue cadre: a non-commissioned officer named Bruenell with some sort of British accent, the psycho private named Chapel whom they’d encountered back at the morgue, and a woman officer named Sarris.

Abandoning their former need-to-know stance, Ellison briefed Blair on the remaining players.

“We haven’t had face time with Sarris yet, so she’s still an unknown at this point. Bruenell seems fairly civilized. It’s Chapel we need to be careful of. You know that knife in the shoulder? Doesn’t seemed to have phased him one bit.”

Blair shuddered at the kind of mind that could ignore a deep knife wound like that. Although Oliver himself continued to spout lofty ideals, he’d apparently seen fit to surround himself with greedy sociopaths. Indeed, who else would abandon their chosen careers and involve themselves in such a hellacious scheme, either for the money, the delusional ideals, the sheer fun of it, or a dangerous combination thereof? Blair wondered how these people lived with themselves.

More constructive eavesdropping had confirmed their enemy body count. They’d managed so far to take out three of Oliver’s men. Major Zeller had gone down in the mineshaft, head crushed between the carts in a sickening red display. Private Quinn had been crushed beneath the ancient air conditioning unit in the morgue, body fluids running across the cracked white tiles once more for old time’s sake. Kincaid had gone to a watery grave, thanks to the accommodating cottonmouths.

Blair’s stomach roiled at the thought of the horrific deaths in which he had played such a significant part. All the FBI training in the world was never going to overcome his aversion to death and violence. Only the thought that they were trying to save hundreds of thousands of lives, including several near and dear to both Ellison and himself, was keeping him from collapsing in shock and grief right then and there.

He wondered how Ellison handled it all, but was afraid to find out in case he didn’t care for the answer. He was stuck with Ellison for the duration of their mission, and he’d just as soon not find out that Ellison was more like Oliver’s soldiers than Blair was comfortable knowing. Still, he was a good judge of character, and was beginning to suspect that Ellison was actually very much a good guy. He hoped that wasn’t any form of Stockholm Syndrome talking. After all, he really, really needed Ellison to accomplish their goals. Not to mention that he was growing to admire and… like the guy. Some field agent material he was turning out to be!

The intelligence they’d garnered on Oliver’s little group, not to mention their ongoing freedom, was mainly due to Ellison, although Blair had certainly played his part. In fact, they deeply needed each other; Blair’s knowledge of the rockets and their deadly contents, plus Ellison’s almost photographic memory of the place coupled with his obviously enhanced senses, served to make them an unstoppable team. At least, Blair had to go on believing they were unstoppable. Believing anything else would be highly counterproductive.

Blair had tried to get Ellison to talk about his enhanced senses, but had been closed down and shut down and very nearly knocked down. Ellison had vehemently denied any such thing, then promptly sniffed Bruenell’s aftershave and managed to avoid yet another encounter with the enemy.

 _“There’s a time and a place for everything, dear,”_ Naomi always said, and so Blair’d eventually dropped the subject. But after this was all over, he just _had_ to get Ellison into a laboratory. He wondered if Ellison even knew what he was. If the military did. If the senses had anything to do with the man’s clandestine incarceration. Where the hell had he put that monograph anyway? It’d been a long time since he’d even thought about Sir Richard Burton. “The explorer, not the actor,” he mumbled out of long-time habit.

Ellison just looked at him funny.

Above ground now, they headed for the east watchtower, careful to slip from one bit of groundcover to the next to avoid detection.

“Look. There’s another rocket. There!” Ellison hissed, interrupting Blair’s planning of tests and experiments. Blair halted just before he reached the watchtower door, stepping back quickly.

“What? Where?” he subvocalized, knowing Ellison would hear him. Keeping his voice low or almost silent was becoming something of a habit. Not unlike following Ellison through tunnels and shafts, and responding with great immediacy to Ellison’s valuable commands— commands that had saved his life more than once already. It worked both ways, apparently, since Ellison was quick to listen to Blair as well.

Ellison pointed to one side of the watchtower. Blair could just barely make out the nose of a rocket launcher pointing across Rainier Bay at Cascade.

Gesturing for silence, Ellison led Blair circuitously to the watchtower and up to the top floor, where the missile resided.

Reaching the landing just outside the watch room, Blair halted. Ellison did the same.

A day ago, Blair would have headed immediately toward his goal, straightforwardness and forthrightness being much-admired qualities. Now he hung back, checking out the situation as best he could while Ellison used his senses and training to reconnoitre the area.

“One guard. Armed,” Ellison breathed into Blair’s ear, only slightly louder than Blair’s whispered words of a moment earlier. He led Blair through the door and into an adjoining room where a few of the bricks were crumbling. It looked like someone before them had played target practice on the old watchtower wall.

The damaged bricks and mortar would serve as handy peepholes. Ellison chose one at standing height while Blair was forced to hunker down at an awkward angle near the floor. No sooner had he plastered his eye to the hole when a large, scary-looking soldier strode into their line of sight. Obviously bored, he paced, took aim at imaginary targets and hummed quietly to himself.

Both the soldier and his furtive observers started when the watchman’s tac radio sparked into life.

“Chapel. Come in, Private Chapel. Over.”

The soldier tossed his cigarette off the parapet. “Chapel here. Over.”

“We’re gonna try something else. Keep your ears open.”

Oliver’s amiable voice chilled Blair’s spine.

“Roger, General. Copy that.”

“Oliver out.”

Blair recognized Chapel now from the frenetic encounter in the morgue. And from the bloody hole in the shoulder of his uniform where Jim had tossed Pendergrast’s knife. It bulged a bit, as if padding or a bandage had been applied to the wound.

The soldier switched off his communicator and began prowling the area, once again looking particularly psychotic to Blair’s stressed-out mind.

Blair tried to think calming thoughts, reaching for yoga techniques and mantras to centre himself: Breathe. Peace. Serenity. Tranquil—

“Attention, Navy SEALs! Attention!”

Blair nearly jumped into Ellison’s arms when a nearby loudspeaker crackled into lifelike gunfire. He clawed wildly at Jim’s shirtfront, hands starfishing against the soft fabric. Just who was grabbing whom came into question when it became apparent that Blair’s tight grip was the only thing keeping Ellison from collapsing.

Blair half dragged Ellison away from their position beneath the speakers. They descended two floors and ducked inside another chamber just off the staircase.

“He still thinks we’re SEALs,” Blair whispered.

Jim shook his head to indicate he hadn’t heard Blair’s words, his hands tightly plastered over his ears. Slowly, uncertainly, he lowered them at Blair’s gentle insistence.

“Oliver,” Blair repeated. “He still thinks we’re SEALs.”

“Congratulations,” the loudspeaker spat, muted by the distance, but still clear. Ellison seemed okay now. Maybe he could adjust the volume or something, Blair thought.

“You’ve managed to obtain some things of mine,” Oliver continued over the PA system. “Some things I find I can’t very well do without. Very clever. You’ve done well for yourselves, but now I’m afraid I must ask for them back.”

The staticky words were so warm and friendly. That scared Blair far more than demands and curses ever could.

Following a theatrical pause, Oliver continued, “And if I can’t convince you to return them, I think I’ve found someone who can.”

Another dramatic pause, punctuated with the faint sound of tinny little voices hissing in the background.

A male voice, nervous, quivering, trickled scratchily from the overhead speaker, “Um. Hell… Hello?”

 ~~~

Park Ranger Ted knelt on the dirty asphalt at the end of the exercise yard, a spotlight illuminating the early dusk, lending a surreal, melodramatic feel to the tragic tableau. Sergeant Bruenell placed his .45 against Ted’s left temple almost gently.

“Tell them your name and age,” Oliver prompted.

“My n… name is T-Ted Summers. I’m 24.”

“Very good, Mr. Summers. Please continue.”

“I d-don’t know who you are, but please, there’s a gun at my h-h-head…”

 ~~~

Blair listened to Ted’s pleading voice, the dilapidated sound system doing nothing to disguise the young man’s intense distress.

“They’re going to… Oh, God!” He was crying openly. It was painful to hear. “Please don’t kill me!”

Ted’s quivering voice trailed off, replaced by Oliver’s genial tones. “Convinced yet? Mr. Summers certainly hopes so. You have two minutes to return my property.”

“He’s got four more loaded rockets, Chief. Why does he care so much about having these guidance chips back?” Ellison whispered, although the continuous crackle and whine of feedback would mask their low-pitched conversation from the soldier two flights above.

“I worked it out back at the warehouse.” Blair jerked his head roughly in the direction of their hometown. “He needs all six to do a complete job of devastating Cascade.” Blair turned to Ellison, defeat evident in his eyes. “I can’t let him kill that poor guy. I’ll go.”

“Wrong, Chief.”

“What? You…? Why would you go?”

Ellison reached out and gently thunked Blair’s head with a knuckle. “I’m not the chemical weapons expert here, Professor.”

“Good point. Okay, here. Take ’em.”

He unpocketed the two rocket guidance chips they’d pilfered and held them out to Ellison. Ellison placed his hand gently over Blair’s for a long moment before gathering up the two electronic chips. He raised his cupped hand closer, peering at the high-tech circuitry, although Blair figured Ellison could probably have read their serial numbers from across the room. And in the dark!

Ellison extended his hand about two feet in front of him and dropped the guidance chips on the floor, where he ground them thoroughly under his heel.

“Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” he muttered, poking at the smashed electronics with his toe.

_“Ahhh! Wha!!! You…”_

Blair could only sputter unintelligible half words, shocked beyond speech by Ellison’s cavalier destruction of the guidance microchips. By doing so, he had virtually guaranteed the cold-blooded murder of Ranger Ted. Still, Blair remembered to keep his voice down.

“Sorry ’bout that, Chief. Do you think Oliver’ll still want ’em?” Ellison whispered, looking falsely contrite.

“What are you doing, man? What the fuck are you doing! Now they’re gonna kill that guy!”

He’d just gotten to trust Ellison. To like him. He maybe even had a bit of hero worship going on, he admitted to himself.

“Oliver’s a mercenary, not a murderer. He doesn’t kill people unless he has to. There’s no profit in it. Only downside.”

This was a new take on Oliver for Blair. Up till now he hadn’t questioned Oliver’s martyr spiel. He felt a little mollified and understood where Ellison was coming from.

“If we give him the chips, he’ll be in a position to kill hundreds of thousands. And then he’ll kill the hostages, too. If we don’t give him the chips, he’ll either kill the hostages or not.”

Ellison moved to the lookout, gazing across Rainier Bay toward his hometown. The researcher part of Blair’s brain wondered just what he could see.

Ellison turned back to Blair. “He’ll probably start killing them one by one. I’ll stop him before he can kill more than a few.”

“You’re a mercenary, too.”

“Not really. I’m just better at math.” He gripped Blair’s shoulder hard enough to make the bones creak. “C’mon, Sandburg. You’ve got some rockets to dismantle.”

“Me? What happened to ‘we’?” What’ll you be doing?”

“Stopping a madman. And if I fail, the job falls to you.”

He let go of Blair’s shoulder and headed for the stairs.

“Ellison. Jim. Wait.”

Ellison stopped, turning back to Blair for a moment. “Disarm the rockets, Blair. If anyone tries to interrupt you, kill them. See if you can release the hostages. If I’m not in contact with you by morning, find and kill the bastards. Remember what I said back in the morgue: ‘Never hesitate’.”

“I… I don’t know if I can do this.”

“There’s only one way to find out. I’ll try to give you time.”

And with that Ellison moved off into the night.

“Well, thank you. Thank you very much.”

He meant it sincerely. He meant it sarcastically. Both. Neither. He sounded small. And lost.

But he drew upon inner strength, and crept toward the rocket launchers.

 ~~~

Simon Banks stood before the desk of the President of the United States, gently, respectfully urging the great leader toward the issuing of the final order.

“We need a decision, Mr. President. It has to be now.”

The President gazed out the window toward the east garden. He might have been admiring the roses, until he turned toward his Chief of Staff.

“These past few hours have been the longest, darkest of my life. This is when I really wish the buck stopped somewhere else.” He braced himself on his huge oaken desk. “I must choose between two tragedies. This is not a choice that sits lightly on my shoulders now, nor will the burden ever be taken from me.”

He ran a shaking hand across his brow. “On one hand, the possible deaths of almost a million civilians in Cascade; on the other, the probable deaths of the hostages on Storm Island. Plus whatever is left of our rescue team. And it’s entirely our fault. The fault of America that a man like Norman Oliver has come to this.”

The President rubbed his forehead tiredly. “That we have ignored, abandoned and marginalized a great soldier like Norman Oliver, and that American boys have paid the price of that neglect in blood, is equally real and equally tragic.”

“At this point in time, sir,” Simon Banks pointed out, “the glass is half full, not half empty. There are no known civilian casualties so far.”

“I don’t believe in half full or half empty, Banks,” the President said. “There are chemical weapons and there are civilians. And there are people on Triple-C who’ve proved they’re willing to use the one on the other.” He sat heavily in one of the guest chairs before his desk, as if by avoiding the official chair he could avoid the official duties.

“Sir.” Banks was almost pleading. “It’s 4:30 am, West Coast time. We’re at the deadline and it’s still nearly a three-hour flight from the Mojave base to Cascade. That’s cutting it far too close to Oliver’s deadline as it is. You need to decide now. Right now.”

The President looked up and met Banks’ eyes.

“We are at war with terror. And a war means casualties. This is the worst call I’ve ever had to make.”

He pressed the button on the intercom that connected him to the room where his cabinet gathered.

“Air strike approved.”

 

 

**Chapter 26. Payback**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 6:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 9:30 am**

**Time Remaining: 1.5 hours**

 

Out in the exercise yard, a sergeant stood, pointing a handgun directly at the kneeling park ranger’s head. Oliver paced nearby.

Ellison emerged from the cell block, hands raised in submission. “Okay. Okay. You got me. I give up.”

“You have got to be shitting me,” the sergeant remarked, his crisp accent identifying him as Bruenell. “One guy doing all that damage?”

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to _be_ one guy, but you captured the rest of my unit.”Ellison gave Bruenell a hard-eyed glance, then dismissed him, walking up to Oliver.

The two regarded each other cautiously for a long moment, then Oliver walked a lap around Ellison, sizing him up.

“Name and rank, sailor.”

“James Joseph Ellison. Captain. U.S. Army Rangers.”

“Rangers, huh. Not a SEAL then. How come you’re here?”

“I feel strangely at home.”

“How’s that, Captain Ellison?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes at Ellison suspiciously. “Do you have some unique knowledge of this prison facility?”

“You could say that. Yeah.”

“Explain yourself, soldier.” Clearly Oliver was tiring of their go-nowhere dialogue.

“I was a guest here once upon a time.”

“A guest?” Oliver barked out a sharp, rough laugh. Bruenell stared in disbelief. Ranger Ted cried quietly.

 ~~~

Private Chapel added another cigarette butt to the small pile he was amassing inside the watchtower rocket station. Blair could read his boredom in his slouched shoulders, the casual way he handled his weapon, and the Alice Cooper number he whistled tunelessly between his teeth.

As Chapel passed Blair in another careless lap of his claustrophobic perimeter, Blair called out, _“Freeze!”_

Chapel might have been a psycho, but apparently he wasn’t stupid. He froze on command.

“FBI. Drop the weapon and turn around. Slowly.”

Chapel did as instructed, turning slowly to face his captor.

Having moved over to the rocket, Blair had one hand on his gun, the other on his tools as he began to unscrew the chem round faceplate.

In an unnerving move, Chapel laughed.

Blair barely managed to retain his grip on his tools as he swiftly removed the cover.

 ~~~

Unbeknownst to Blair, Captain Sarris had been heading up the watchtower stairs just as he’d made his move. With the silent skill of years of guerrilla training and experience, Sarris moved silently to the outside ladder and climbed to the roof, where she cinched her rappelling clip to the steel railing.

 ~~~

Oliver paced around Ellison a final time, chuckling in disbelief at how much trouble this lone wolf had caused, as well as at how simple it had been to call him out.

“You’re some kind of joker, Ellison. Maybe you’re a lunatic. Are you of sound mind, Ellison?”

“I’m not the one threatening millions of innocent people.”

Oliver’s demeanour changed like a switch had been thrown. He held out one hand.

“Give me the guidance chips. Now!” He was all career military hardass.

“Sorry. No can do. I tossed ’em in the bay.”

“That was stupid of you.”

Changing the subject without acknowledging the pointless insult, Ellison asked, “Summers. Your hostage. Would you really have shot him?”

 ~~~

Blair, still holding Chapel at bay, pulled the chem round from the rocket. The going was slow, handicapped as he was by the need to keep the gun and a good part of his attention trained on Chapel. He began to lift the poison pearl strands from the chem round, gently laying them on the ground in a slow, smooth motion. Rising again, he reached inside the round to unclip the guidance system chip.

Suddenly, a woman swung like Tarzan into the watchtower.

Reacting instantly, Blair grabbed the chip and dashed into an adjoining room. He was trapped, the only exit a five-storey fall. He placed the guidance chip between his teeth and used both hands to steady the gun, now aimed at the door back into the watchtower area.

He was about to find out if he could shoot someone.

 ~~~

The two men faced off over Oliver’s loaded gun. Ellison’s question dangled in the air between them: _“Would you have shot your hostage?”_

“You seem like a bright man, Captain Ellison. Bright men understand necessity.”

“Bright men also obey the law,” Ellison responded, quoting, “‘Wherever law ends, terror begins.’”

“John Locke,” Oliver said, then countered with a quote of his own: “‘Where there is no law, there is no transgression.’” He didn’t wait for Ellison to cite his source, supplying, “The Bible. Romans 4, Verse 15.”

“Article 7, _American Constitution,”_ Ellison shot back. “‘Treason against the United States shall consist of…’”

Oliver interrupted angrily, defensively, “The American Constitution was written by traitors, Captain. Traitors against a government founded on injustice and tyranny and stupidity. I see little difference between my motivation and theirs. I, too, will be a hero to history.”

“I see.” And Ellison did see now, unable to stop himself from taking a small step backwards, away from this much-revered madman.

“Do you, Captain Ellison? Do you really?” Oliver took an advancing step, eyes never leaving Ellison even when gunshots were suddenly heard coming from the direction of the watchtower.

“So, Captain Ellison. You’re not such a lone wolf after all. Sergeant Bruenell. Go check on our other intruders. And kill the son of a bitch when you find him!”

 ~~~

Each time one of his enemies approached the doorway, Blair fired his gun. It was like one of those old arcade games, except Blair had spent more time in libraries, on basketball courts and in the science club than in the arcades. He was just getting the hang of it when the hammer clicked fruitlessly on his spent clip. He clicked desperately a few more times just to be sure.

A moment later, the woman—who had to be Captain Sarris—stepped through the doorway, Chapel a pace behind her.

Blair moved the guidance chip around in his mouth like a big, flat toothpick.

“Swallow that and I swear on my father’s grave I’ll cut your belly open and pull it back out.” Sarris sprang at Blair, whipping the butt end of her gun against his temple.

Blair crumpled, nearly unconscious. Sarris jammed her fingers into Blair’s mouth, retrieving the small circuit board.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Warren! He bit the thing nearly in two.” She flung it on the ground in disgust. “It’s shot.”

With great satisfaction, Blair passed out.

 ~~~

Blair squinted through painful eyes, gradually regaining consciousness. He peered around, taking stock of the stark cell. Sunlight streamed in through a tiny window set high in the ceiling above the wheeled cot.

He climbed arthritically to his feet and tottered over to the bars.

“Ellison.”

Dead silence.

“Ellison?”

“It’s about time you finished your beauty nap, Chief.”

“Where are you?”

“Next row up. Feels like old home week.”

 ~~~

Ellison sighed, greatly relieved Blair had finally regained consciousness. He’d quizzed Oliver’s henchmen when Sandburg had been brought in and had been informed that Sleeping Beauty would come around soon enough. The soldiers had left and he’d been monitoring the strong, healthy heartbeat since then.

He sat on his cell bunk, back braced against the wall, legs comfortably crossed. He actually sat directly on the mildewed mattress stuffing, his task almost complete.

As he had done years ago, Ellison had split and sharpened one of his shirt buttons, then employed it to slice and rip the mattress ticking into long strips. These he patiently braided into a long rope. Once again he mentally thanked the Chopec for teaching him rope making when he’d lived among them so long ago.

“This is so tiny,” Blair called, sounding small and lost himself.

“Are you referring to your intellect, Blair? Or another portion of your anatomy?” Jim never paused in his braiding.

“I mean the cell, Ellison. How could you stand it?”

“Five feet by seven feet. Try living in one for a year. What happened while I was with General Nutbar?”

“I only got one chem round. There’s still three left.”

 ~~~

Blair’s head hurt from the pistol whipping, but he was scared and alone and needed to keep contact with Ellison, both for the mission and for his own sanity.

“What is it that you did to get yourself locked up in here, anyway? Might as well tell me. It seems we have time to kill here.”

He moved to the right front corner of his cage, as close as physically possible to Ellison’s position.

“Let’s just say I stepped on a really big toe or two. And got royally shafted for my efforts.”

Blair seated himself on the dusty cell floor, prepared to be there a while. “How?” He rubbed his temples.

“Well, Chief. You already know my good buddy, Lee Brackett.”

Ellison tested the durability of the braided rope much the same as he had the nylon clothesline he’d used to dangle the FBI agent from the balcony of the Cascade Arms Hotel.

 ~~~

Air Force technicians were frantically installing the white phosphorus incendiary bombs under the wings of an F-16.

Across the hangar, General Finkelman briefed four F-16 top gun pilots while Captain Mitch Reeves looked on.

“Gentlemen. As you know, the target is the island housing the Cascade Correctional Center. This is not a precision strike on Triple-C. The entire island must be blanketed with this stuff!”

“Ma’am. If we hit that island with willy peter _,_ it’s gonna look like Iwo Jima when we’re done. Nothing and no one can survive it.” The young pilot licked dry lips, waiting nervously for a response.

“That’s why this is a volunteer mission, Captain. If any of you have doubts you can carry it out, speak up.” Finkelman looked grim.

The pilots stared straight ahead. Silence.

Finkelman called, “Captain Reeves? Report, please.”

Stepping up to the plate, Captain Reeves stroked his moustache once before beginning. “We’re going back in time, gentlemen. And lady.” He nodded courteously to the female pilot. “We’re doing this the old-fashioned way, by dead reckoning. You see your target, you shoot your wad… so to speak.” He glanced at General Finkelman, who just nodded for him to continue. A young fighter pilot giggled.

“We’ve jerry-rigged a release lever. You’ll find it on the left side of the cockpit. It’s only got two positions: safety and release. Throw it on release, the bomb drops in five seconds. Change your mind within that five-second window? You just throw it back on safety. Your bomb doesn’t drop. It’s that simple. Any questions?”

Again, the pilots remained silent.

 ~~~

Blair stared blankly into space, his ping-pong mind focused on a single thought for once.

“Jesus,” he muttered from time to time, shaking his aching head, trying to puzzle it out. Ellison had told him a long story involving undisclosed State secrets, covert investigations and incriminating evidence. All of it caught on microfilm, which only Ellison had. Not the specifics, mind you, but nevertheless Blair gleaned an overall picture of justice gone awry and a good man sorely wronged. Given Brackett’s behaviour back at the interrogation room, it all made perfect sense. He believed Ellison. Trusted him and believed in him.

Blair raised his voice again. “Why didn’t you just tell the Bureau where the microfilm was? Make a bargain?”

He spied a small box of rations on the shelf above the toilet; grabbing it, he returned to his place by the bars. He gratefully downed about half a bottle of Crystal Springs water and started munching on a granola bar.

“Some bargain,” Ellison scoffed. “They’d get the microfilm and I’d get a bullet in the head. It’s called ‘being suicided’.”

Blair flinched, but didn’t bother to say he didn’t believe it, although a week ago he probably would have. He’d seen and heard too much in the last 24 hours or so to ever be the same naïve young agent. Naomi would be… conflicted about his abrupt maturation.

“I see your point. Can I ask you something else? About your escape?”

 ~~~

Ellison rose, lifted the bed and, straining hard, eventually yanked off one of the bed’s heavy wheeled casters.

“What?” he called down to Blair as he knotted the caster onto one end of the braided rope.

“You went down the shower drain, through the tunnels to the power plant, under the steam engine and out through the intake pipe; that much I’ve got.”

Ellison reached through the bars and dangled the caster out into the hallway. Carefully measuring by eye, he allowed about four feet of braided rope to play out between his grip on the rope and the metal wheel. “You make it all sound so simple, Chief.”

“But before all that, how’d you get out of your cell?”

Ellison began to swing the rope like a bolo, the caster serving as ballast.

“I only ask because, in our current situation, it might be useful information.”

“Trade secret. I’ll tell you this, though. It was a lot easier than getting in.”

Having reached critical momentum, Ellison put everything he had into the next arc and tossed the caster down the row of cells. The weight of the caster pulled the rope along. It flew down the hall, where it caught the cell release lever located on the wall. The sudden stop caused the rope to wrap itself several times around the handle.

Ellison tugged the rope taut to set it like a snagged fish. Then he pulled slowly and delicately.

The cell door release lever pulled down, and Ellison’s cell door, along with all the doors on that tier, opened at once. He smiled.

 ~~~

Hearing the doors opening above him, Blair yelled, “Hey! What’s happening?”

Getting no response, he started to panic.

“Ellison? Jim!”

Suddenly, Blair’s cell door opened as if by an invisible hand. Blair exited the cell hastily to find Ellison standing in the hall waiting for him.

“C’mon, kid. Your gear’s over there.”

Ellison motioned toward a heap of their belongings—weapons, flares, whatever field rations they hadn’t yet devoured—flung messily on the floor in the former guard station. He turned away and started walking.

“Where we going now? Blair called after him, hastily donning his effects. “Do you know where Connor and the SEALs are? We can get them out now, too.”

“They’re in the other building. And, by the way, it’s no longer ‘we’, Sandburg. It’s just ‘you’. You want to go rescue them, be my guest. I’m getting off this friggin’ island once and for all. If they blow it all to Kingdom Come, good riddance, I say.”

“But only a couple of hours ago…”

“Being back in that cell reminded me of how much I hate people. And how nothing’s ever going to change. I’m outta here!”

“Shit.” Blair grabbed the rest of his stuff and a gun and chased after Ellison, not bothering to point the gun at his departing partner this time.

 

 

**Chapter 27. Siege**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 7:30**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 10:30**

**Time Remaining: _30 minutes_**

 

The advancing morning sunlight painted a cheery overlay across the sad contents of the infirmary command centre. General Oliver sat behind the desk while two of his three remaining soldiers, Bruenell and Sarris, positioned themselves about the room.

Even with Ellison and Sandburg in their custody, Chapel stayed on duty in the watchtower, guarding the two working rockets housed there. Oliver was confident that the sixth and final rocket remained undiscovered.

The silence was almost a physical being, seeming to hang over them like some sort of disembodied, malevolent inmate who had died under the poor care provided in this room.

Oliver stared at his phone, sweat beading on his brow, hands clasped in silent prayer, although whether to a righteous Christian God or to the President of the United States of America was a question even he couldn’t have answered.

“Time?” he breathed, taking his eyes off his field phone long enough to make eye contact with Sarris.

The captain consulted the wristwatch she now held between thumb and forefinger. “Fifteen minutes to go, Norm.”

Oliver glanced at her sharply, not happy with impropriety of using his first name.

“Sir,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes.

Oliver studied his remaining captain. He was sure she was still under the charismatic spell he’d deliberately woven. Indeed, she’d had a bad case of hero worship for him even before he’d recruited her to be part of his team of rebels. One night, after a few carefully planned drinks, she confessed that she’d followed him on this crazy mission half out of lust and half because he reminded her of her father, also career military. Oliver was afraid the two feelings were quite jumbled in her head and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Like the rest of Oliver’s little band, sanity was not her strong point. A pretty freckled face could certainly hide a rather fucked-up heart.

“We have three operational rockets left, General,” she prompted.

When Oliver failed to acknowledge her words or implied requests, he asked again. “General?”

“I heard you, Captain.” Like a good military leader, Oliver strove for surface calm, even if he felt stretched thin underneath.

“Should we prepare for launch, then, General?”

Oliver hesitated, thinking hard before answering the question— possibly the most crucial question of his entire career.

“General?” Sarris prodded, almost demanded.

“Not yet, Captain,” he finally answered. “Not quite yet.”

He could tell she was beginning to lose patience, anxious for action. He was afraid he was losing some of his lustre in her eyes.

“General Oliver. It’s almost time.” Bruenell, ever the peacemaker, interrupted the battle of wills between general and captain.

“I’m aware of the time, Sergeant.”

Oliver glared at his soldiers, then at the phone. Neither was responding as it should.

 ~~~

The clock on the situation room wall read 10:47. Thirteen minutes to go.

Taggart, Kelso, and Wells were clustered around one end of the huge mahogany table. Everything their respective areas could possibly be doing was already done, everything they had to say already said. Only nervous small talk remained to fill the interminable minutes in this most gruesome of countdowns.

“When was the last communication from our men on Triple-C?” Kelso asked, although he already knew all the details.

“Seven hours ago,” General Taggart replied. It had been six and a half last time someone had asked that particular question.

 ~~~

Ellison emerged from the main compound ruins and moved down the embankment toward the water. Blair stayed above.

“Jim.”

Ellison stopped.

“What they did to you. The injustice. It still doesn’t mean you can walk away from this. A million people across that bay will die. Not to mention the men and women Oliver’s holding hostage, including our friends the SEALs who got us here!”

Ellison gazed across the Bay toward Cascade. “Only three people over there I ever cared about.”

“You were once a different man.”

“You don’t know what kind of man I was.”

“You were a warrior. A champion. Sworn to do your duty. Just like me.”

“I was a soldier, Sandburg. You’re just a gun-totin’ civil servant.” Ellison refused to meet Blair’s eyes. “Go ahead and die for your pension. I’m getting the hell outta here. They’ve taken far too much from me already.”

“Strong words, Ellison. But inside you, deep down, there’s still the kernel of caring. Of duty. Of honour.” Blair was quickly exhausting every tactic and trick he had in his persuasive arsenal. When none of it seemed to be working, he pulled out all the stops and resorted to begging. “Ellison! Wait! Help me help those people. Please.”

Ellison opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind and began the climb down to the waterline.

 ~~~

Oliver steepled his fingers, resting his chin on their tips.

“Eleven fifty-seven, General. Three minutes to go.” Bruenell moved over to the gurney on which Sarris perched. Oliver knew enough about body language to recognize the realignment of loyalties when he saw it.

“They’re going to call,” Oliver said with dogged determination.

“They are not going to call, General,” Sarris countered sullenly.

“I… I don’t understand this.” Despite all the careful planning for alternative outcomes and predicted contingencies, the very real possibility of failure was only just now sinking in. “They’re prepared to let all those people die…?”

He felt surreal, disassociated. He looked at Sarris as if from a great distance.

Her eyes held a strange light. “I understand it just fine. They’re calling our bluff. We have three operational rockets left. We have to stick one of those rockets in their ear, General.”

“Scott?” Oliver said softly, turning to his most trusted compatriot. He hadn’t know Bruenell long, but the man had quickly won his trust and admiration with his calm competence.

The sergeant hesitated, as if unsure of his path for once. “I… I don’t know, Norman.”

“Seventy thousand people…” Oliver shook his head, looking lost. “I didn’t… I didn’t ever…”

Sarris was furious. “You didn’t ever what?”

Oliver stared wordlessly at the phone, ignoring the question. He didn’t owe her an answer. How dare she question his leadership? His commands?

“You didn’t ever what, General?” Sarris got herself all up in Oliver’s face, shouting although only inches separated them. “General! Forty-eight hours ago I was in a cushy job at Pendleton. As of this moment I am subject to prosecution for treason and murder. Do you know what that means? It means the electric chair. For all of us!”

Bruenell sighed with resignation, “She’s right, Norman. Authorize the launch or it’s over. And I’m not in love with this particular ending, either.”

Although it wasn’t entirely clear of which ending he was speaking.

All eyes were on Oliver, waiting for his command.

Sarris stood at attention. “Authorize the launch, General,” she demanded.

At last, Oliver nodded.

 ~~~

Ellison stood on the narrow strip of gritty beach, the bright morning sunlight doing little to make the place look any less dismal and depressing. He began to strip off the clothing that would hamper his swim to the opposite shore.

“You’ll never make it,” Blair commented idly, no longer even trying to convince Ellison to stay, just delaying his own departure before he returned to the grim task at hand… alone this time.

“I once swam the Panama Canal, Chief, but you’re entitled to your opinion. It’s a free country… usually.” He yanked off his first boot.

Blair, disgusted, turned and headed back, grumbling, “Fine. Fine. I’ll just fucking do it myself.” Anger gave him the impetus to carry on with his mission where bravery had not.

 ~~~

Satisfied that Oliver would follow through now that he’d acquiesced, Captain Sarris crossed the compound to join Chapel in the watchtower. Together they readied one of the undamaged rocket launchers.

Oliver’s voice reached them via walkie-talkie.

“Launch coordinates 675 dash 439.”

“Aye, aye, General,” Captain Sarris acknowledged. “Coordinates 675 dash 439, awaiting launch command.”

She was relieved her hero had stepped up to the plate after all. They’d show those Goddamn assholes at the Pentagon a thing or two. Finally, somebody’d pay for what had happened to her father on his final tour of duty.

“General. We’re waiting on your command.”

“Fire,” the general ordered, almost a whisper. “Fire at will!” he restated, louder, more firmly.

It was a good thing he’d finally come across, because Sarris had every intention of firing as soon as she was ready, Generals and SEALs and Army Rangers and FBI agents be damned.

She pressed the ignition switch. The rocket’s tail fired into hellish life, sending it roaring from the launcher toward Cascade.

 ~~~

Ellison ceased unzipping his jeans as he watched the deadly rocket roar over his head toward civilian population.

“My God.” Ellison looked up. “I never thought they’d actually do it.”

Blair stood above on the embankment, halted in his tracks not far from Ellison.

“Anything you’d like to change, Jim? Like your mind, maybe?”

 ~~~

The FBI technician stared at the radar screen in disbelief. “Oh, my God! They fired a rocket. It’s headed east. Trajectory coordinates…” Her fingers flashed over the keyboard. “675 dash 439. Right at…” A few more keystroke. “Rainier University!”

The occupants of the FBI command centre stared at the radar screen in shocked silence.

“My God.” Naomi Sandburg’s voice cut through the hubbub from the back of the room where she sat, forgotten amidst the activity, the secrecy, the technology. “The annual basketball fundraiser. I remember it from when Blair was a student there. It’ll be packed!”

 ~~~

Ellison climbed back up the embankment, facing Blair with grim resolve.

“I… I wanted to leave, Blair.” Ellison began, looking more confused than resolute. “I did. I never thought he’d actually go through with it. But now, I… I gotta stay. Gotta defend that great city. My home.”

“So are we partners, now?” Blair asked.

Ellison held out his hand. “Partners, Chief.” He grasped it firmly, holding on for long moments.

Blair was grimly encouraged by Ellison’s change of heart, although he was more than aware this partnership could be very, very brief.

 ~~~

Sixty thousand basketball fans screamed their support as the Rainier Raiders charged onto the field to play the Cascade Jaguars in the annual fundraiser that pitted amateurs against the pros.

The crowd leapt to their feet as local policeman Danny Choi stole the ball away from Orvelle Wallace, one of the Jags’ most popular players.

Out over the Bay, the lethal rocket screamed its deadly way toward the stadium.

 ~~~

General Oliver was alone with Bruenell in the infirmary, Sarris having gone to join Chapel at the watchtower. He stared at the transmission from the rocket’s optic camera. The video monitor first showed clear sky, then the rocket reached its apex and blue sky was replaced by the Rainier Arena directly below, filled to its capacity of 60,000 people.

Oliver watched the screen nervously, jaw twitching frantically as he swung his gaze from the rocket guidance control computer to the rocket’s video monitor and back.

“You’ve made the right decision, Norman. They tied your hands. Left you no choice.” Bruenell’s soft Australian cadence lent warmth and weight to his supportive words.

Despite his friends’ assurances, Oliver found himself unable to condemn all those people to such a gruesome death. Although it had always been about the money, he’d spouted all that rhetoric about unfair deaths and military blunders for so long that he’d come to believe some of it. He’d internalized some of his self-serving ethics.

Making a quick, conscience-driven decision, Oliver lunged for the rocket guidance control computer.

 ~~~

The rocket’s guidance control suddenly blinked red and the rocket veered unexpectedly off on a new vector. Headed now toward Rainier Bay, it splashed down almost silently, the Ebola-hybrid virus so unstable that simple emersion in salt water would render it harmless.

A boatload of nearby fishermen grabbed the sides of their rocking motorboat, bitching about spilled beer, unaware of how close they’d come to the most gruesome of deaths.

 ~~~

The FBI radar technician reacted quickly and efficiently to the change in the rocket’s trajectory, double checking his instruments before announcing excitedly: “Sir! Agent Brackett! The rocket’s changed course. It’s headed into the bay!”

His comment, however, was totally superfluous, as all eyes had been glued to the displays since the moment the impending strike had been announced.

A jubilant cry echoed around the command centre as the rocket’s ominous blip on the radar screen winked out. The cheer was short lived, as everyone quickly recalled the remaining rockets and swiftly returned to their assigned tasks.

Naomi accepted her first cup of real coffee in decades. Now was not the time for chicory or other herbal substitutes. She thanked Beverly sincerely and gratefully remained in her borrowed chair at the FBI agent’s side.

Sanchez, Brackett, and Naomi Sandburg formed an odd trinity as they kept their silent vigil in the mobile war room.

 ~~~

From the watchtower, Sarris and Chapel stared across the bay in disbelief. In utter disgust, Captain Sarris tossed her field beret off the parapet. “I don’t fucking believe it. He pulled the plug.”

She headed back toward to the infirmary at a dead run, a sizzling ball of anger and disillusionment.

Private Chapel remained at his post.

 ~~~

Captain Sarris was so absorbed by her anger and loathing and brand-new quest for vengeance that she never noticed she’d acquired two tails all the way back to the command post. Once in the building, Ellison and Blair moved silently down the infirmary corridor. They paused just outside the open door, listening to the voices emanating from within.

A finger to his lips an unnecessary reminder for silence, Ellison ushered Blair into an observation room adjacent to the main infirmary. As if the current crisis wasn’t trauma enough, it occurred to Blair that this might once have been a place from which to watch unauthorized medical experiments on the inmates, and he shuddered.

He yanked his mind back to the present and joined Ellison at a four-by-16-inch open slit in the wall. It must have been designed for armed guards to shoot unruly inmates without exposing themselves. Now it provided them with an ideal spot for observation of the drama unfolding within.

 

 

**Chapter 28. Vendetta**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 8:00 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 11:00**

**Time’s up!**

 

Sarris stood before Bruenell and Oliver, panting with exertion and fury.

“You’re gutless. I knew it,” she seethed.

“The problem is,” Bruenell added, “now Washington knows it, too.”

“Careful, soldiers. I’d maintain discipline if I were you.”

Norman Oliver showed no sign of regret or remorse. In fact, he looked proud of his decision to abort at the last moment.

Sarris whipped out her sidearm, safety off, aiming directly at Oliver’s heart.

Ellison and Blair watched unnoticed through the open panel.

Captain Sarris stood tall, tone unfriendly and formal. She grabbed a tac radio and broadcast her grim ultimatum to her remaining compatriot in the field, eyes never leaving the general’s. “General Norman Oliver. I hereby state that I am relieving you of your command. Private Chapel? Are you with me?”

“I’m in,” Chapel’s staticky voice responded immediately over the airwaves. “I’ve betrayed my country for you, Oliver. And now you’ve betrayed me.” Even the shitty technology failed to hide the menace in his tone. Blair was glad Chapel wasn’t anywhere near them at the moment. He had enough to deal with without that particular psycho.

Sarris turned to the last of the rogue Marines. “Sergeant Bruenell?”

Bruenell looked from Sarris to Oliver.

“Scott?” Oliver queried as well, wonder, not anger, in his voice.

Bruenell was silent a long moment before facing his commanding officer and saying softly, “I’m sorry, Norman. It’s over.” Turning to Sarris, he said, “I’m in as well.”

Surprise and disappointed was written on Oliver’s face. “Scott, I’m warning you.”

But the sergeant appeared to have made up his mind, realigned his loyalties. “Stand down, General.” Lowering his eyes, he added, “Please.”

“Stop this nonsense immediately.” Oliver turned back to Sarris, whose gun never wavered. “That’s an order, soldier.”

“And I’m not accepting it. _Sir.”_ Sarris snarled the final word mockingly. “Your days of ordering me around are over. Overdue, I’d say.”

In the adjacent room, Blair exchanged a tense look with Ellison. Ellison aimed his gun through the slit…

It all happened so fast, Blair could hardly follow the action.

Oliver drew his own .45. Bruenell charged at Sarris, but Sarris fired first, hitting Oliver squarely in the chest.

Ellison fired through the slit, winging Bruenell in the arm as the wounded Oliver staggered toward the steel door behind him. He wrenched it open and lunged into the corridor.

Ellison’s spray of bullets sent Sarris and Bruenell diving for cover. Blair grabbed the semiconscious Oliver and dragged him down the corridor to the relative safety of the infirmary bathroom. Once inside, Oliver collapsed against the wall, blood running across the tiled floor.

Laying down cover as he scuttled after Sandburg, Ellison assumed a defensive position in the washroom doorway.

“They’re calling the third guy to come here,” Ellison tossed back over his shoulder at Blair between rounds. “That Chapel guy who was with the missiles in the watchtower.”

Ellison fired at Sarris from the doorway while Blair knelt over the dying general. He stared at Blair through glassy eyes.

“My God. What have I done?” He coughed weakly, frothy blood leaking out, tracing the deep furrows that bracketed his mouth. They might have been smile lines, but he was hardly smiling now as he gasped out his bitter revelation. “It’s done. I’ve… I’ve murdered thousands. Innocent lives… Too late. Too late.”

“It’s not too late, General.” Desperation lent urgency to Blair’s tone. “Tell me where the last rocket is.”

Oliver struggled for breath, barely able to get out the words: “Lighthouse… roof… top.”

Blair took a moment to close the staring eyes, and reflect on the conflicted man who had just died in his arms.

But for only a moment, because he had a job to do, two more chem rounds to disarm.

“Go do your job, Chief. I’ll try to hold them off.”

Ellison blasted away at Sarris, allowing Blair to sprint past him, heading for the exit and then to the lighthouse.

 ~~~

Ellison’s bullet had barely creased Bruenell’s arm, so while it stung like a son of a bitch, it didn’t hamper the man, hopped up on adrenaline as he was. An experienced soldier, he quickly ascertained that Ellison was laying down cover for the other interfering bastard.

He smiled cruelly as he realized the shorter guy was no military man, the ponytail a dead giveaway. Probably a scientist of some sort, versed in poisons but neither strategy nor combat. He quickly elected to follow what he assumed would be easier prey. If he did away with all potential witnesses, he just might make it out of this yet; poor, but alive.

Unable to follow the interloper directly thanks to Ellison’s barrage, Bruenell charged back through the command centre, heading out through the exercise yard, around the main courtyard and toward the lighthouse. His anger at losing precious minutes with this circuitous route lent additional power to his ground-eating stride.

 ~~~

Sarris managed to pin Ellison down with fire, while at the same time retreating. She moved back inside the command centre, pulling the metal door closed, effectively cutting off Ellison’s line of fire.

Ellison advanced cautiously toward the closed door. When he was only a few yards away, the heavy steel door creaked open and a satchel explosive flew out, sliding across the corridor floor toward him. Ellison turned and dashed away.

He’d almost scrambled to safety when the satchel detonated. The corridor walls imploded, the ceiling collapsed, and Ellison was engulfed in two tons of plaster, crumbling cinderblock and grotesquely twisted rebar.

 ~~~

Blair arrived at the watchtower, finding Chapel gone and Bruenell not yet arrived. Quickly, he detached the chem round from the rocket and was about to pull out the poison pearls when Bruenell barged in.

Blair, chem round in hand, moved behind the stairway and scaffolding in the middle of the room.

Bruenell moved one way, Blair the other, holding the chem round in front of him.

“Give that to me,” Bruenell ordered. “You haven’t a clue about the bigger picture here.” He held out his hand calmly. One small part of Blair’s brain noticed blood on his torn uniform sleeve. Jim’s bullet must have only brushed his flesh.

“Shoot me and I’ll drop this, and we’re both dead. One of these pearls’ll kill everything within two hundred feet. You know how this shit works?”

Bruenell gently laid his gun on a nearby workbench, heading toward Blair with hands up, as if trying to gentle a frightened animal. “Now step away from the rocket, please.” Bruenell smiled charmingly and advanced on Blair.

The only escape route for Blair was between the rocket and the window. Bruenell moved ever closer. He murmured calming things, promising it was all over. That he wasn’t really on Oliver’s side. Never had been. Blair believed none of it. Instead, he manoeuvred them around to a point where he could reach the launcher’s controls. As Bruenell passed between the window and the launcher…

“Hey, Jarhead. You know the Elton John song, ‘Rocket Man’?”

Bruenell narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yes. And I hate it. I much prefer Queen.”

Closer. Closer.

“Do you really think now an appropriate moment to discuss musical preferences?” And he lunged at Blair.

Blair, in turn, twisted out of Bruenell’s path and toward the rocket, stabbing the ignition switch just as Bruenell recovered his balance and turned toward Blair again. Too late for Bruenell, the rocket, minus its deadly jewellery, lifted off, hitting Bruenell squarely in the chest and dragging the soldier’s ruined body clear out of the watchtower window with its velocity.

Blair watched, stunned at what he’d done. The rocket carried Bruenell over the cliffs, where man and missile crashed into the sea.

“Well, it happens to be my favourite fuckin’ song!” Blair yelled after him, although he knew it was a little pointless, since a man with a rocket through his chest was probably not a good listener.

 ~~~

There was no cry of elation this time back at FBI temporary headquarters when the FBI radar technician announced with some confusion and some relief that a second rocket had launched, but had immediately gone down in the bay, barely clearing Storm Island.

Sanchez did a quick and unnecessary recount. Two rockets had splashed down in the bay. Sandburg had reported two disabled when they’d last heard from him hours ago. That meant, as far as those stationed on Prospect Pier knew, that there were two deadly missiles still unaccounted for.

 ~~~

On Storm Island, Blair also counted two left: one right here in the watchtower with him and the one Oliver had said was located on the lighthouse roof. He could only hope Oliver hadn’t gone to his grave a liar. Even though the general was gone, it looked to Blair like his remaining soldiers were dedicated to finishing their mission.

Swiftly, he liberated and destroyed the guidance chip from the nearby rocket. Make that five down, one to go. He wished he had some way of letting the team back in Cascade know this, but all of their communication equipment had been lost, destroyed or confiscated over the last few hectic hours.

He made his way to the lighthouse without incident, which was a good thing because he really didn’t think he was up for much more in the trauma department.

Alone on the lighthouse roof with the last chem round, Blair pulled out the strand of poison pearls, carrying on as best he could, what with having just impaled a man on a rocket. Not to mention setting snakes on another, and crushing the head of a third. Why had he ever wanted to see action? Or be a field agent? If he lived through this, he was definitely going back into teaching. The cloistered halls of academia were looking better and better every moment.

His voice cracked as he chanted under his breath, “I’m letting this go. I’ll deal with this later. I’m letting this go. I’ll deal with this later.”

He truly hoped there would be a later.

He forced his attention back to the task, and pulled out the poison pearl strand. It rattled audibly in his trembling hands.

He unclipped the rocket guidance chip and pocketed it. He’d destroy it the second he’d safely re-housed the virus.

Just as Blair was gently feeding the toxic chain back into its casing, one of the copper strands holding the pearls in place snapped. Four of the large green pearls came loose and dropped away from rest.

In a death-defying ballet of twists, Blair managed to catch three of the deadly globes before they hit the ground. A passing interest in juggling back in high school notwithstanding, four was too many for Blair to capture. He missed the fourth, which dropped, hitting his shoe.

Despite the steel toe, the glass bead must have been strong enough and the shoe leather forgiving enough to prevent it shattering right then and there. It rolled along a groove in the rooftop concrete, slowly, like a set-up from the old “Mousetrap” game.

Delicately laying the other pearls on the cement rooftop, Blair dove, grabbing the stray pearl an inch from the roof’s edge. And he’d thought he was shaking before! Without seawater to dilute and counter the effect, the single pearl dropping to the rocks three stories below would have killed everyone within a hundred yard radius. Including the late Blair Sandburg!

He drew a deep breath, then another as he tried to get his breathing under control. Calm. Breathe. Calm. Breathe. _Crash!_

Abruptly, the huge lighthouse window behind Blair exploded, showering him with glass.

He hit the ground without even thinking about it, protecting the poison globe on the way down. Rolling behind the closest possible cover, he peered out from behind one of the huge searchlights that lined the rooftop.

Partway across the compound, on the rooftop of another building, Veronica Sarris stood. She raised her smoking sniper rifle and fired again and again.

The searchlight was blown to bits. Blair rolled away, glass shards raining down on him, cutting his clothing, nicking his skin where the tac vest and protective gear left him exposed.

He raised his head furtively, searching for cover, but there was none. The top of a lighthouse is a bleak place and open place. He was an easy target for Sarris’ rain of bullets.

Blair imagined he could see her smile as she carefully drew a fresh bead on him. Bleeding, terrified, huddled against the sun-warmed concrete, he awaited death, knowing he’d done everything he could to avert the deaths of thousands. With only one rocket left, they could do a lot less damage. It was a comforting thought to die with.

He imagined, too, that he saw a silhouette behind Sarris. Must be a trick of the light.

But it wasn’t an illusion. It was Ellison! Dirty and bloodied, but there nonetheless.

Sarris must have sensed him and spun around. Ellison used Sarris’ own momentum to unsteady her. He batted the rifle aside, kneed her in the solar plexus, and gripped her neck. Sarris twisted wildly, using every dirty trick there was. Ellison’s foot slid on loose pebbles and Sarris broke free, charging back toward the building’s staircase, Ellison in pursuit.

Relief and dread raged through Blair’s system, even as he gave Ellison a grateful nod. He lay shaking on the cement amid the shards of glass, waiting for some feeling of control to settle over his limbs.

Peering gingerly over the roof’s edge, fear of heights notwithstanding, he saw Ellison chasing Sarris across the exercise yard toward the far side of the island.

Then Blair heard the door burst open down below. Holy shit! Wasn’t Sarris the last one? No, he’d forgotten Chapel. The guy must have circled ’round and come at the lighthouse from the other direction.

Blair scrambled to his feet, quickly trying to locate all the poison pearls. The rooftop was runnelled with cracks and crevices, and the detached pearls had rolled all over the place.

He was charging back for their canister when, with a great crack, the tip of an axe blade smashed through the door he’d locked behind him when he first arrived. He was so tense that the surprise caused him to lose his balance and almost drop the poison pearl again.

Having chopped clean through the locking mechanism, Chapel barged onto the roof, demanding, “Give me the guidance chip!”

“I destroyed the guidance chips! Every last one of them!” Blair screamed at his attacker. Reaching inside his pocket he used his nails to rip out the diodes and wires from the tiny circuit board.

“Then I’ll destroy you, you little fucker. You destroyed _everything!”_

Blair, frantic, sprinted across the lighthouse roof, through broken glass and twisted machinery. He lost his footing and fell; not stopping, he continued to move across the floor in a half crawl, half crouch, still clutching the pearl he’d saved.

Scooting behind some rusty backup machinery on one side, he hid as best he could, knowing it would be only moments before Chapel reappeared with his guns and ammo. And axe.

Blair tracked the sound of Chapel’s footsteps as the soldier crept closer to Blair’s hiding place.

Chapel rounded that final corner, standing over the crouching, panting Blair, grinning broadly.

“Kiss your ass goodbye, little man,” Chapel sing-songed, and buried his hatchet in… the space where Blair had just been.

Having rolled out of the way at the last moment, Blair scrabbled upright and ran some more, only to have his ankle snatched in a crushing grip. Chapel had abandoned the axe for bare hands and yanked the prone Sandburg toward him.

They grappled and strained in a macabre embrace. Blair was nearly done in, exhausted, traumatized, and weakened by not enough food or sleep since this whole disaster had begun. And fighting one handed, as he still protected the deadly globe.

He struggled in vain as Chapel wound fat fingers through Blair’s ponytail to hold him in place while hammering him with his fist.

Left with no choice but to use the only weapon he had, Blair jammed the fingers of his right hand into Chapel’s mouth and rammed home the poison pearl with his left.

The astonished Chapel looked like he was mouthing a green billiard ball. Driven by fear, pain and anger, Blair gave Chapel an uppercut to the jaw that would have done Ali proud. The blow drove Chapel’s lower jaw upward and Blair could hear the glass shattering, the sound dulled by Chapel’s flesh.

Chapel’s eyes widened; for a long moment, nothing happened. Then oily, grey smoke began to leak from his nostrils. His cheeks bulged and his eyes streamed pink slime.

Blair attempted to scramble away, but was pinned in place, unable to escape. Chapel bear-hugged him, pressing his face close, opening his mouth almost as if to laugh or sing, instead spewing forth a cloud of poison in Blair’s face, along with blood and sludge, broken glass and broken teeth.

“If I’m going, you’re sure as hell comin’ with me!”

The words were barely intelligible as the man’s tongue and lips began to putrefy and lose shape.

Chapel’s grip slackened as his nerve endings died and Blair was able to shove the living corpse off. Chapel rolled away, his body quivering as blood began to pour from his ears and nose. He spasmed in a sickening dance of death.

Blair reeled away, coughing, dizzy, falling to his knees. He’d been gassed. Seconds counted. Desperately, he ripped at the Velcro flap on his pant leg. A syringe had been taped to his calf. Much as he hated needles, Naomi hadn’t raised no fool.

He pulled it free. Hesitating not at all, he plunged the long needle directly into his chest, into his heart, the impact depressing the plunger.

_“I haaaatttte needles.”_

 

 

**Chapter 29. Finkelman’s Folly**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 8:30 am**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 11:30 am**

 

Blair’s world slowed down to sloth-pace. He saw images in slow motion: Naomi and him, a dog, a kite, a Superman cape, a basketball tournament. His first lover. A favourite teacher. Jim Ellison. A kaleidoscope of images twirling, swirling. As were the contents of his stomach, which he quickly donated to the lighthouse rooftop.

Disgusting, gross, but normal; no squid ink, thank God.

Lying on the unforgiving concrete, he became aware of his breathing slowly beginning to normalize. He was amazed at being alive. Amazed that the atropine had actually worked.

He gazed up at the afternoon sky, wondering idly what was shimmering in the distance. Angels to take him home? Oh, God! The squadron of F-16s. He’d almost forgotten.

So he’d saved himself from death by poison only to be burned alive by chemical fire.

Jeeze. He could have saved himself the Goddamn needle!

 ~~~

Back at temporary command, Sanchez, Naomi, Brackett, and the entire squad of FBI technicians abandoned several million dollars worth of high-tech equipment to watch from the window as the F-16s winged across the bay toward Triple-C.

Beverly Sanchez hung her head, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. She crossed herself quickly. “May God have mercy on their souls.”

Naomi buried her face in her hands, sobbing. “You can’t do this. You can’t let this happen.”

 ~~~

Blair staggered back out into the open, to a spot where he hoped the pilots would see him. Shaking, limbs numb, fingers unresponsive, he knelt down and reached for the pocket riding low on his other pant leg. He pulled out the green flares, cracked them into flame and held them aloft. His arms shook and trembled, staying up only by the last of his willpower. He imagined himself a flaming Christ figure in a tasteless fireworks display.

As the F-16s few closer, Blair, in slow motion, waved the flares. It was all he could manage. It would have to do.

On came the F-16s, roaring over Storm Island. They were almost on top of Blair.

Exhausted, unable to hold his arms up for another moment, he let them fall, defeated. Head hanging low on his chest, he knew he’d evaded one ghastly death just seconds before only to die screaming, immolated by super-hot burning white phosphorus with the stupid, stupid nickname willy peter. Stupid. Stupid.

He raised his head as the change in jet engine sounds registered in his addled brain. Four F-16s veered away from the island, but the rear jet…

Blair watched in horror as the last of the F-16s released its canisters. They plummeted toward him. Death was a cruel tease today.

Numbly, Blair tracked the downward plunge of the willy peter. Slowly, he realized that it’d landed on the other half of the island. He watched dully as it detonated on impact in a monstrous infernal explosion. And he realized he was still there to observe it.

Oh, God. Wasn’t Jim on that half of the island?

His terror lasted only a second before the concussion knocked him completely off the top of the lighthouse, tossing him like confetti into the embracing bay below, the impact enough to hurl him clear of the menacing rocks at its edge.

Blair, concussed in the water, barely conscious, began to sink. He’d been through so much. How could he be expected to swim now? Now?

Then Jim was beside him in the water, gripping him strongly under his arms and pulling him up. Up. Out of the water, into the blessed oxygen.

Jim dragged Blair ashore, coughing and spluttering. Blair coughed out the water he’d inhaled along with some other, less-desirable fluids.

Blair was joyfully, incoherently delighted to be breathing, to see his partner alive, to have all the evil and foulness of the last few days washed from him in an impromptu salty baptism.

Catching his breath for the second time in the last hour, Blair looked up at Jim. “The woman… Sarris?”

He needed to tie up the last of the loose ends: six missiles, seven renegade soldiers. All no longer present, but he needed to know they were accounted for.

Ellison shrugged, looking sad. “Last I saw of her, she was heading to the far side of the island. Probably had a boat or something waiting.”

“Guess we’ll never know.” The far side… where the willy peter had dropped. While Blair certainly hoped he’d seen the last of her, he wouldn’t wish such a atrocious death on anyone.

“What about the hostages? The tourists and the Rangers? Connor and the SEALs?”

“They’re fine, Blair. Honestly. I could hear them clearly on my way back to this side of the island.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a tac radio. “Lucky for you these things are waterproof.” He held it out to Blair. “You’ll probably want to call in.”

Blair accepted the radio, but made no attempt to dial just yet. “Ellison, um, Jim, I have something to tell you. You know that pardon contract you signed?”

“Brackett ripped it up, right?”

“You knew? All this time?” Blair’s exhaustion did little to dampen his disbelief.

“I’m not a fool, Chief.”

“I’ve gathered that by now.” He grinned tiredly. “All I know is that whatever you did, you don’t deserve to go back. You’ve paid your debt to society and then some.”

Ellison smiled back.

A wordless understanding was reached between them. Indeed, it had been percolating all the way back to their first meeting, from the moment Blair had failed to alert Brackett and Sanchez that Ellison was scoring the one-way mirror with the quarter. Had it only been two days ago?

“I want to tell you a secret, Blair. Turn around.”

Although the request confused him, he’d certainly come to trust Jim by now. He turned his back on his partner as requested.

“In the west courtyard at Rainier University is a fountain.” Blair nodded his understanding. He knew that fountain all too well. “The stone on the outside wall immediately under the dedication plaque is loose. If you remove it, you’ll find something in there that may be of value to your superiors.”

He waited a moment for further information, “What’s that? Jim?”

Silence.

Spinning around, Blair searched for his friend, but James Joseph Ellison had left Blair Sandburg’s life as stunningly, shockingly fast as he’d entered it.

For now.

 

 

**Chapter 30. Vow of Silence**

**Location: Storm Island, Cascade, Washington** ****

**West Coast Time: Sunday, 9:00 pm**

**Washington, D.C. Time: Sunday, 12:00 pm**

 

Sanchez, Brackett and the FBI technicians stared out the window at Triple-C, plumes of smoke plainly visible to the naked eye clear across the bay.

In the warehouse command centre, Naomi, sobbed openly. Sanchez, tears running down her face, put an awkward arm around Blair’s grieving mother and began to usher her from the room. It was all over. The heroes may have saved city and saved the day, but they had been unable to save themselves.

Suddenly the radio crackled, “Prospect Pier come in. Prospect Pier…”

“My Blair! He’s alive1” Naomi shrieked, throwing off Sanchez’s attempt at comfort and hurling herself back to the table that held the radio.

Brackett grabbed the mike. “Sandburg? Brackett here. Are the hostages still alive?”

“Every one of ’em, sir. And the Navy SEALs, too.”

Hissing for his cheering staff to quiet down, Brackett husked into the mike, “What about Ellison?”

“The retrieval squad just needs room for one, sir. Come and get me. And quite frankly, Lee, I’m kind of tired.”

Loudly, no doubt so everyone could here the commitment she was making to Blair on behalf of the Bureau, Sanchez leaned over and said into the mike in Brackett’s hand, “Name your vacation spot, Blair. The Bureau’ll pay for it.”

 ~~~

Lying in the welcoming sand by the pier, Blair drifted in and out of a dazed sleep while waiting for the extraction team. It wasn’t until Sanchez and Brackett were striding down the gangplank that he came fully back to himself.

Sanchez helped him to his feet, saying warmly, “You surprised me, Blair. I never thought you could do it.”

Not really offended by the backhanded compliment, Blair grinned sleepily. “Neither did I, really.” He really hadn’t. Or wouldn’t have back at the beginning if he’d had any inclination of what was to come.

“Where’s Ellison’s body?” Brackett asked sharply, tactlessly.

“I couldn’t say, exactly, sir.” Blair scratched his neck and obfuscated like a pro. “When I was knocked into the sea, the last I’d seen of him he’d been chasing one of Oliver’s team toward the far end of the island. Anybody there got totally vapourized.” He picked up a few grains of sand and let them trickle off into the breeze. “Willy peter’ll do that to a guy.”

Another FBI agent came hurrying up the beach, brandishing a cell phone like an Olympic torch, calling breathlessly, “The White House is on the line. It’s _the President!”_

Brackett elbowed past Blair and Sanchez. “I’ll take it.”

He reached for the phone but the Agent moved it quickly out of his grasp. “Um, sir, actually, it’s for Dr. Sandburg.”

Brackett glared at Blair as he hesitantly took the phone.

“Uhhh, this is Blair Sandburg.” Blair nodded continuously almost nonstop for about three minutes. “A hero? Not me, really. In fact, the man you should be thanking is Jim Ellison.”

He swatted away Brackett’s hand as he tried to commandeer the cell.

“That’s correct, Mr. President. James Ellison. U.S. Army Ranger incarcerated by the FBI for 13 years without trial.”

Another long pause during which Blair seated himself on the edge of the pier, feet dangling above the waves.

“Yes, sir. I’ll put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece with his free hand. “Agent Brackett,” he said unnecessarily, since Brackett had been hovering nearby since the beginning of the conversation. “I did mention Ellison survived, didn’t I?”

Brackett looked suspiciously at the phone in Blair’s outstretched hand. In Blair’s exhausted mind, he mused that it might have been a snake, a cottonmouth, perhaps. Brackett reached for it slowly.

“I can explain it all, sir—”

“My resignation. But— I can— Yes, sir.” Brackett grimaced.

Blair, smiling to himself, turned away.

Finally managing to detach herself from her armed escort, Naomi raced into his arms for a long, warm hug. “Sweetie!” she shrieked. Blair was far too tired and overwhelmed to be embarrassed in front of his colleagues.

“Mom!” he cried in return, hugging her long and hard.

 

 

**Chapter 31. Second Chance**

**Location: Just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia** ****

**West Coast Time: Noon-ish**

 

Blair rolled down the window, inhaling deeply of the pine-scented air. He was only a couple of hundred miles north of Cascade but he was sure the air smelled different. Fresher. More rugged. Smelled Canadian. He fancied he could tell he was in another country by smell alone. His mind strayed briefly to someone who probably could. Sighing, he yanked his straying thoughts back to the road.

It had been a long drive up from Cascade, and he’d had a great deal of time to think. To process. To move on while movin’ on.

 _“The radio played a forgotten song. Brenda Lee coming on strong.”_ Blair sang loudly along with the radio. Classic Rock 101 broadcasting out of Vancouver. The music of my life, he mused. He had a nice enough voice and could carry a tune fairly well. Must have been all the chanting and Kumbaya-ing he’d done since infancy. His thoughts turned to Naomi and how thrilled she’d been when he’d announced he was quitting the FBI and returning to the quiet life of teaching.

At the Bio-Chem Department’s combination going-away party for Blair/congratulations on your promotion for Sam, she’d had asked him how long he thought he could take teaching till he was bored enough to put a spork in his eye. He suspected she might have a point. If only he could find a way to teach and do a little serving and protecting simultaneously.

Suddenly, shockingly, a harsh electronic shriek interrupted his thoughts, drowning out the music. Blair white-knuckled the steering wheel and barely stopped himself from diving under the dashboard. Disconcerting red lights flashed in his rear view mirror. He switched to the inner lane to allow the emergency vehicle to pass.

It didn’t. Instead it pulled up right on his ass, clearly indicating that he was the problem. Confused, he signalled judiciously and pulled over to the side of the highway.

A tall, somewhat menacing man in mirror shades and plain clothes left the blue and white Ford F-150 and strode to the driver’s-side window.

Blair switched off the radio and fumbled for his licence, insurance and registration, already spieling his alibi. “I wasn’t speeding, Officer. Just admiring your beautiful country. What seems to be the…”

The cop bent down, practically leaning into the driver’s seat, getting all up in Blair’s face. Blair hated transparent intimidation tactics and responded with a facetious comment almost without thinking. “Up until recently, Officer, I worked with highly contagious bacteria and viruses for a living. You might want to keep your distance. For your own safety, of course.”

“Great career choices, there, Chief. Thanks for the update.”

The cop hooked his index finger over the bridge of the sunglasses, drawing them down to reveal intense blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. And he was smiling now. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

Shocked and amazed, Blair could only grin back.

“How do I know you’re even a cop?” Blair played along. “Anybody can buy a flashing light and a siren at Canadian Tire. Can I see some identification, please?”

A Vancouver Police Department badge was produced that read: _J.J. Ellison, Detective, Major Crime Section._ It certainly looked genuine enough.

“Detective, huh? How’d you land that?

“Someone a little more… constructive than the former administration decided she wanted to ‘disappear’ me. So here I am. Still within easy tracking distance, should they decide they want to look me up, but, quite conveniently, I’m now the problem of an entire other country.” He stood tall and gazed around the area. “It’s really beautiful here. I’m glad I came.”

Blair watched with interest as Jim sniffed the air around him, an almost bemused look on his face. Blair thought again of being able to identify a country from its smell. He wanted to ask about it, to get this probable Sentinel into a research lab, but instead he asked, “So how come a detective’s pulling cars over on the highway? Not enough major crime around here to keep you busy? Nobody murdering hapless Canada geese or poaching more than their share of maple syrup?”

That brought Jim’s attention back. He chuckled warmly. “There’s surprisingly little crime here, relatively speaking. Lots of Tongs and other gang stuff—mostly drugs and prostitution. But no, I’m not on traffic duty here. I wouldn’t pull just anybody over. Only you, Sandburg. You’re special.”

“Ah, Jim. I’m blushing. You knew I was coming, right?”

“Well, I have made a point in retaining certain contacts on both sides of the border.”

“And how is the very lovely and unbelievably tough Special Agent in Charge Sanchez? I hope she’s enjoying her recent rise in the FBI ranks.”

“She’s fine. As a matter of fact—”

Blair interrupted. “Is she behind this rather strange coincidence of both of us getting new careers here in Vancouver? She must be, because how else would you know I was—”

Now it was Jim’s turn to interrupt. “Actually, Dr. Sandburg, I made a deliberate point of coming to meet you outside of town.”

Blair could hardly have missed the abrupt change in tone, subject, and, most telling, form of address. He left it alone… for now.

“It’s kind of a drug, gang-related thing…”

“And that relates to me how, exactly, Jim?”

“Well, as a bio-chem specialist, you know that sometimes drug labs are highly volatile, right?”

Blair nodded.

“There was a lab in the Gaslight district that blew up last night. Looks like they were making some new kind of designer drug there, and we could really use your help in identifying some of the chemicals involved. It could save lives.”

Blair was immediately interested. Jim knew just how to spark his curiosity. Still, he had prior obligations.

“Well, I’m, uh, flattered of course, but I just accepted a position teaching Anthro 101 at the University of British Columbia. I’d be happy to give you a hand once I get to my new apartment and get settled in. I just have to meet the real estate agent and get the keys.”

Jim looked grim as he held up a key on a barely recognizable Century 21 key fob. It almost looked like it had been rescued from a fire.

“Uh, Ellison? What’s with the key chain?” He accepted the proffered item, holding it gingerly because it looked so filthy. “What’s going on? Nobody gets this kind of service without having paid at least some taxes.”

“You know that loft-style condo you just rented in a renovated warehouse? It was located right next door to the drug lab I mentioned, and… uh… you have, as I recall, some experience with explosions, right?”

Blair just stared. Please don’t say it. Please don’t—

“I’m sorry, Blair, but your loft is kind of a big, charred pile of rubble now. It’s really not liveable. Plus Forensics has it cordoned off. You can’t stay there.”

“Jesus, James. Where the hell _am_ I going to stay? Tomorrow’s Labour Day and I start teaching classes on Tuesday.”

“There’s plenty of nice—” Jim began.

Sharply, Blair asked, “Is the FBI behind this? I wouldn’t put much past them after…” He let the statement lie.

Jim hesitated, a myriad of emotions crossing his face. Eventually he said, “No. I really don’t think so. There’s no angle in it for them, plus I’m pretty sure I know who did do it.” He shrugged. “You’re just an unlucky bystander.”

“Hey!” At this point, Blair was more concerned about where he was going to be living now that he was homeless. “I could stay with you. It’ll be fun,” he promised over Jim’s speechless protests.

“No. Oh, no. I had far too many roommates for far too long a time,” Jim sputtered. “What’s wrong with a hotel, hostel, something?”

“C’mon, Jim. One week. One week and I promise, I promise, I’ll be out of your hair. Come on. One week, man.”

“You know, Sandburg, I’m already beginning to regret this.”

 ~~~

A week came and went. Dr. Sandburg started teaching at UBC and working as a consultant with the Vancouver PD. In fairly short order, he and Jim managed to catch the drug dealers who were manufacturing a dangerous new drug called “golden”.

Then there was a serial killer who was hung up on yellow scarves, a mob boss, a mad bomber, a safe cracker, a carjacking ring. Naomi managed to get herself involved in that one, which kind of helped her understand Blair’s need to be actively working to make his world a better place. It wasn’t so different from her own goals, after all.

Somehow, Blair kind of forgot to look for another place to live. And Jim forgot to nag him about it. (Although he certainly nagged him about plenty of other stuff.)

The men had an unspoken moratorium on discussing the events of Storm Island, until Blair could stand it no longer. He waited for a day when he felt Jim was in a particularly talkative mood, and managed to work the conversation around to the item he’d rescued from the fountain at Rainier.

Deciding that then was the right time to ask, Blair reached into his shirt pocket and handed Jim a worn plastic canister.

“Would you please tell me what this was all about, Jim? What was so Goddamn important that they locked you up for 13 years for it?”

Jim reached for the item. He turned the canister over and over in his fingers, staring at it in silence.

After a lengthy pause, Jim opened the canister and spooled out a tiny reel of film.

“This film, Blair, is the only reason they didn’t kill me 13 years ago and why they haven’t killed me now. They’re afraid this will fall into the wrong hands, just as it fell into mine way back then.”

“Go on, Jim,” Blair encouraged gently.

“It was handed over to me by a dying CIA agent. Someone who’d been at the centre of things since the ’60s.”

Carefully rewinding it and returning it to its battered case, Jim chuckled, really relaxing for the first time in their climactic association.

“You want to know who really killed President Kennedy, Chief?”

 

 

_~ The End ~_

 


End file.
